Huge overreach on the part of the US. Here is the FAQ for banks. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/information-for-foreign-financial-institutions

My understanding is some banks were refusing to offer accounts to US citizens or their spouses even if not US citizens.

Wow! Could you imagine US banks ever being asked to comply with similar regulations in another country?

<quote>Wow! Could you imagine US banks ever being asked to comply with similar regulations in another country?</quote>

Nope the wailing and gnashing about over reach would be extreme. One of the things that limited the impact was many of the affected countries were already sharing most of the information at the government level.

http://www.revenue.ie/en/practitioner/law/double/usa-1997.html

Yes, applies to US assets property and stock market. One example the foreign estate planner gave was if a Non Citizen lives abroad and say has $200,000 investment with a US firm say Vanguard. $100k in domestic US fund and $100k in an international fund. Non citizen pass way, US citizen spouse would have to pay taxes on 40% of $40k in domestic fund (first $60k tax exempt). On the international fund the spouse would not have to pay any estate tax because the holding are not assets in the US (even though your investing through US brokerage). Sounds confusing but these are the things foreign estate planner would assist in a trust. All would be eliminated with both spouses were citizens.

As for your question regarding property in Ireland, inherence/ gifts from a foreign non-US citizen is not tax by the IRS because taxes only apply to the Doner (say your parents that are not US citizens leave you property. They would get taxed by Irish government not the US bc they have no ties to the US IRS). The US citizen donee would have to file forms that they reviewed the property only for money laundering purpose (kind of like why we files FBar).

Was really hard to absorb all this info during the consult, which was being charged by the minute.