Americans Abroad Want Relief From IRS on Foreign-Trust Reporting

The IRS’s efforts to revamp its standards on the disclosure of foreign trusts are disappointing to US expatriates, who say the agency hasn’t done enough to clarify whether they’re caught up in the rules.

Many foreign retirement plans are classified as foreign trusts, which requires the overseas Americans who hold them to report such trusts to the IRS out of concern that they could be used to avoid taxes.

Practitioners and advocates for US expatriates say proposed IRS rules on foreign trusts don’t clear up ambiguities about who has to report and who doesn’t, leaving hundreds of thousands of expatriates ...