The problems with mortgages abroad are different depending on your situation. In our case, my spouse is not American but, has made ALL of our mortgage payments. Should we ever sell *and we need to soon due to not really being able to afford this property anymore* then my half is reportable and gains are taxable to the U.S. So in effect what would happen is a Canadian person ends up taxed by the U.S. on gains not earned by an American.
Secondly, we really wanted to move from our huge big bank to a locally invested credit union. There where a lot of good reasons for wanting to move over. I really love that this credit union takes profits made and puts them all back into our community for one thing. Well, because there was one American in the household they really did not want us to move our checking, savings or mortgage there. They are very small and if they dont' take any Americans then they aren't going to be subjected to the requirements and huge costs of FATCA. My spouse and son being Canadian CAN have accounts there. Now in Canada they cannot really come out and say blatantly that they don't take families with a so called "U.S.person" in them but, it was made pretty clear to me what happened and I did discuss it with them. I asked "Last year you were soliciting us and wanting us to move or business here. Now you are saying you can't give favourable terms upon learning we have one U.S. person in the family, within less than five minutes you've changed your tune." I was let know in a round about way...that was the reason. A LOT of people all over the world are being told they are not going to have their mortgage renewed because nobody wants to deal with American clients even if you've held your mortgage there for years and years. FATCA is causing all kinds of collateral damage not intended.
Some people are moving back, if they have a job and can afford to but, ironically it's low and middle income expats who are most stuck, especially if they are long term expats. Short termers don't have as many issues as those already in the fifties who have been moved abroad for many years.
FATCA is so complicated for individual circumstances it really must be reworked. Frankly, I think the best way to deal with UBS sorts of issues *weren't most of those people living IN the U.S.?" is for the U.S. to go to the international norm of residency based taxation then concentrate all their resources on those living in the U.S. who are indeed "off shoring" In that way they could get the REAL tax cheats while not really harming legitimate expat families with no U.S. holdings whatsoever.
= new reply since forum marked as read