Many U.S. expats are still enjoying the sense that the annual nightmare of getting their American taxes done has come and gone, and they have a few months of peace before they need to begin worrying again. Others still have a few loose ends to tie up, and are keeping an eye on the final deadline for these left-to-complete bits that is moving ever closer by the day. (Monday, Oct. 17, in case you're wondering...)

Recently, a reader of the American Expat Financial News Journal got in touch to say that they were in the process of beginning to plan for Tax Year 2022 – and as part of this, wanted to know what help, if any, they might be able to get from a component of the IRS known as the "Taxpayer Advocate Service".

The UK’s HM Revenue & Customs has significantly expanded the scope of its register for trusts as part of what's known as the Fifth Money Laundering Directive, an element of the European Union's ongoing efforts to crack down on the laundering of money, especially across international borders. With delays in implementation, the pushed-back deadline for registration under the new rules of Sept. 1, 2022 initially seemed a long way off.

When the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act finally came into force around the world in 2014 –  four years after it was signed into law by President Obama – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was preparing its own account information reporting regulations package.

The Common Reporting Standard, as it was to be known as, differed from FATCA in that it was intended to be global, and fully reciprocal – meaning that those countries participating in the collecting and forwarding of information about other countries' resident taxpayer's financial accounts would expect to receive the same data about their taxpayers resident in that country...