Like folks everywhere, Americans are often surprised to discover how different things can be when they live abroad. Sometimes the differences are small; sometimes they're hilarious.

In recent years, as the U.S. has started coming after American expats for unpaid taxes and penalties, the surprise for some Americans has come in the form of what one tax expert we know calls "that OMG moment of realization" that hits when you discover what life-long citizenship-based taxation actually means, and will mean for the rest of your life, particularly if you happen to be an American living abroad who has no immediate plans to return to the States...

Last week, we reported the news that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had announced that U.S. taxpayers could now begin to claim a "reasonable cause" defense, in the event they were ever to find themselves hit with a penalty in connection with a tax matter for which they had "reasonably and in good faith" relied upon any IRS-published FAQs (frequently-asked-questions) that has to do with new tax legislation.

For Virginia La Torre Jeker, the well-known American tax expert and blogger who is (famously) based in Dubai, the IRS's statement was, well, about as clear as mud...

The world – including its banks, cross-border financial services institutions and even many governments – has come a long way since the Richard Murphy and others founded the Tax Justice Network in around 2003, to call attention to the enormous amounts of tax evasion that they then were seeing taking place around the world, and which they began to document...