[jdblair]

If you are a US citizen and you have any kind of middle class life that crosses international boundaries, you quickly become familiar with many of these terms and processes.

Hold a balance in a foreign bank? File a FBAR (foreign bank account report). Move large sums of money? Be prepared to document the source of the funds. I'm now practiced at preparing bundles of PDFs that show a "paper" trail.

BTW, filing a FBAR requires you to report the maximum balance in an account, something that most definitely is not reported on a bank statement unless you hold the balance for more than a month. This is hardly ever the case in an active account.