[29athrowaway]

Same in most countries.

The US was a weird model where they ask you to resubmit the same information they already have in hope you will declare more income than they know about.

In part, because the US taxes you on your global income, not only your US income, which means that there will be income they won't know about unless you declare it.

For the majority of people that only have income from salary, it's an unreasonable burden and Intuit has lobbied the government so that it continues to be a burden.

[samus]

It's not that income abroad would be particularly easy to hide. Since financial institutions around the world have reporting duties regarding US customers, Uncle Sam will find out about it. The true, completely legal way to hide income abroad is establishing holding structures to siphon most of it into tax shelters abroad.

[29athrowaway]

Is FATCA effective? how automatic is it?