I get that as an American overseas I have to have to file taxes in the United States regardless of my residency. I get that the IRS has all these acronyms to remind us of their rules, FATCA, FBAR, PFIC etc…

But what blows my mind is that in  all this compliance and scare factor of doing the right thing as an American overseas, the IRS neglects to have a cost effect system set up for American expats to make payments into their system.

They literally make us break rules like having a bank account in the states even though we are technically non-residents.  Incurring bank fees, plus US cell phones so that we can access those technically “we shouldn’t” have bank accounts all for the purpose of making sure that if we owe money to the IRS we can pay them on time. Paying with a foreign bank card will incur extra percentages in fees.  So the U.S. government demands we stay compliant while we legally reside overseas but they make no effort to help us get them paid without adding extra cost. I guess no one has mentioned to the IRS that an American expat generally pays double accounting fees just to file their U.S taxes.  Nor do they realize we incur mobile phone charges and bank fees just to be compliant? Of course not, that’s not their issue. We decided to move overseas and as such we know we will forever pay the price for freely living where we choose, especially if it’s outside the USA.