For what it's worth, there are a few other reasons a US citizen may be compelled to disclose quite a bit of financial detail without being criminals. Just from

For what it's worth, there are a few other reasons a US citizen may be compelled to disclose quite a bit of financial detail without being criminals. Just from what I've experienced, joining the Army, getting a security clearance, and attempting to become an adoptive parent all required having to disclose basically everything, up to and including people coming to my house to interrogate me on why I got divorced 18 years ago, having to take a polygraph. All in spite of definitely not being a criminal. I'm not complaining. This is all voluntary (though I think the adoption licensing is excessive, given it's even worse than getting a security clearance whereas a biological parent just needs to inject sperm into someone). But living overseas is also voluntary. I completely agree that the US government is unnecessarily overbearing about this kind of thing compared to most other countries, but let's be honest about how widespread this is. It's not at all limited to burdening expats. Even down to cosmetology licensing, we do this kind of thing everywhere, at every level of government, to many types of people. This presumably contributes to why Americans are so anti-government compared to Europeans. Our main points of interaction with governments are often things like this. Just this morning, I finally managed to pay off four years worth of back property taxes. The stupid thing about it is I've been trying to pay the entire time. The money has always been sitting in an escrow account. But something about our deed was incorrect, the county had no record of my lot existing, and we couldn't pay! When they finally corrected the deed, we not only got the four years worth of charges, but late penalties on top of it, even though I'd been trying to pay! And because the past year's charges were all listed as supplemental, the escrow account didn't even pay it and I've been fighting with them for 8 months to give me back my money so I can pay my taxes. So you are not alone, Rachel Heller.