See this is what I don't understand. Facta does not change tax law. It should have no bearing on the cost of having your taxes done. You already had to declare foreign bank accounts to the IRS, so really all the law is doing is getting them declared automatically. Now fewer tax lawyers certainly will raise costs, but that has nothing to do with Facta.
What it changes is that it requires (non-US) banks to keep track of which of their accounts are owned or co-owned by someone who may have a (dual) US citizenship, and may have made an error in their tax returns, or risk having some of their US assets seized. Some banks just prefer not to take the risk.
The non resident citizen tax returns can become very complicated in the situation where the non resident US citizen is married to a non resident foreigner. The tax forms don't even support this configuration - the spouse must have a social security number. The foreign spouse must then apply for a special "non resident alien" social security number, for the special purpose of being able to file taxes in a country they are not even allowed to enter without a visa.
And how exactly do you determine the value of your shared assets in dollars? Have you made capital gain every time the dollar fluctuates against the local currency? Since we bought our home, our property has dropped significantly in value in the currency we earn our wages in, but theoretically gained a bit in dollars, so how can we be sure this doesn't add up to exceed $50,000? The only way to be sure is to hire an expert figure it out for you, for several thousand $. They are now charging more for their services because of the higher risks and responsibilities involved.
The net amount we have to pay in that country one of us isn't allowed to enter without a visa has always added up to $0 because the extremely high taxes we already pay locally (50+ percent income tax, 20+ percent sales tax, 80+ percent excise tax on fuel etc) can be deducted.
