More are renouncing U.S. citizenship as IRS cracks down

[Art_from_Ark]

78. If you live a full year in a foreign country, the threshold income is about $92,000

in US dollar equivalent. For example, if I made the equivalent of $92,000 in Japanese yen working in Japan as a resident of Japan for a full year (2011), then I might be subject to US taxation if the US tax bill were higher than the Japanese tax bill-- but in that case, I would pay the difference, not the full US tax. However, various deductions can increase that threshold.

But I think this article is about a different law, the law that requires the reporting of foreign bank accounts (not related to the IRS). Of course, if you live in a foreign country, you're going to have at least one foreign bank account. It used to be that you didn't have to report such bank accounts, then the Treasury Dept. imposed a reporting requirement for all foreign accounts if the cumulative total at any point in the year reached or exceeded $10,000 US equivalent. That seems like a pretty low threshold, especially here in Japan, where if people have less than $10,000 total in their accounts they consider themselves "poor". Anyway, the reporting requirements have become increasingly detailed, and a penalty can be imposed if accounts are not reported to the Treasury by June 30 of each year.

On edit: The article is wrong about reporting foreign bank accounts to the IRS-- they are actually reported to the Treasury Department, not on the US tax return. The IRS only cares about foreign bank accounts if the interest is above a certain threshold.