A federal appeals court rejected treaty-based credits against the 3.8% investment tax for Americans in France and Canada, putting refund claims at risk.
State proposes online passport renewal abroad for 220,000 applications, but country access and passport delivery remain unsettled.
A federal judge blocked new USPS absentee ballot rules nationwide on Aug. 11. The draft exempted overseas voters. The executive order behind it did not.
The IRS expatriation list carried 1,781 names in the second quarter of 2026, up 68% from a year earlier, weeks after the renunciation fee fell to $450.
Never-resident voters, Americans born abroad who never lived in a US state, face RNC suits in eight states. Michigan and North Carolina split.
The State Department will charter a yacht to retrieve a stranded citizen, then bill for it, and an unpaid bill reaches the passport.
The Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act cleared Senate Finance 26-1 with three provisions for Americans abroad. The bill as introduced in February had five.
VA Foreign Medical Program payments jumped 263% since 2018, but veterans abroad still wait for direct deposit until 2027 while U.S. accounts get paid first.
A growing number of Americans are returning home after living abroad, prompting financial advisers to dub them "boomerangs." But despite the trend, no US agency tracks how many citizens move back.
The Internal Revenue Service published 1,462 names on its latest quarterly list of U.S. citizenship renunciations for the first quarter of 2026. That's up 13.8% from the same quarter a year earlier and marks the second-highest quarterly total in the past year. The increase is notable because it occurred before the government lowered the fee to renounce U.S. citizenship.
A Treasury watchdog report released April 8, 2026 found the IRS is not converting FATCA data on high-balance nonfilers into enforcement cases, despite the law's original mandate to target offshore tax evasion. The compliance burden created by FATCA's reporting requirements continues to fall disproportionately on ordinary Americans living abroad, including those seeking basic banking access.
Republican National Committee lawsuits challenging overseas voting laws are active in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Virginia, and Colorado as of late June 2026, targeting state statutes that extend voting rights to certain Americans abroad ahead of the 2026 midterms. Legal challenges and practical barriers are both shaping overseas voter participation, though they operate on separate tracks.
The Residence-Based Taxation for Americans Abroad Act, first introduced by Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) as H.R. 10468 in December 2024, expired with the 118th Congress before advancing. Though 2026 was widely anticipated as a potential breakthrough year for the reform, legislation has not yet moved in the current Congress.
U.S. passport holders reached 48% of the American population in 2024, up from 5% in 1990, per State Department figures cited in a January 2026 Congressional Research Service brief. The Bureau of Consular Affairs issued 27.3 million passports in fiscal 2025, a single-year record, bringing valid passports in circulation to more than 183 million.
