It coming from the I.R.S. to report all Americans who have a counts overseas. If B.S.C. doesn't provide the information B.C.S. won't be able to do business in America. Keep your account under $10,000. I was told, I don't know if it's 100% correct, but this tax grab is tied into the A.C.A.
I believe you're right about the 10K. When we did our taxes for 2013 we told the accountant we had overseas accounts. He asked how much we had in them, and we said at that time maybe $6-8,000. That was the last question, IRS didn't even want to know what country it was in. We just had to disclose that they existed "somewhere".
Different reporting requirements/laws are being confused.
Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) "Bank Secrecy Act": This is mostly an anti-
money laundering effort. There are several requirements.
Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR Requirements. Requires reporting if your aggregate value of all foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at
any time during the calendar year reported. This reporting requirement has been around forever.
So, the correct question by the accountant should have been, "has at any time has your aggregate value of
all your foreign accounts exceeded $10K during the reporting year?"
The other is
Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). This is why your offshore bank wants your social security #. This is an anti-
tax cheat effort. It is a US law that requires US citizens, resident aliens (United States persons), including those living outside the United States, to report their financial accounts held outside of the United States, and requires foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about their U.S. clients- if these banks which to continue to do business with/in/ the US and with other US banks. Many European banks have recently stopped opening/closed accounts of US persons, to avoid the onerous reporting requirements.
The above acts have also been amended by and/or bolster the "Patriot Act" an anti-terrorist effort.