>>OK - so it appears that the law changed in 2012.

Having suffered years of expensive advice about international taxation and other malarkey: US citizens have been subject to tax on worldwide earnings for quite some time if your foreign *earned* income exceed a threshold, currently around $100K, or any amount of non-earned income. Elsewhere if you're a tax resident or repatriate money you'd expect to be liable at least for the difference between the tax you paid abroad and the local tax: the US difference is that you don't have to be US resident or repatriate the $ to owe US tax.

The 2012 Fatca's purpose is to undo years of rule flouting mostly by wealthy US citizens who keep earnings abroad and fail to declare it. It places burdens on foreign banks to report US citizen accounts to the IRS and can make it much more difficult for a US citizen to get a foreign bank account compared to what you faced- because it's easier for the banks to decline your business than to take on additional reporting burden or risk huge penalties if the IRS decides you're a tax cheat. Fatca also defines pensions and even some savings as taxable income independent of the threshold. I think that's where the "bite" occurs even for US citizens of modest means who live abroad.