I am looking for a little bit of reason with regards to the 8621 form and the 3520 form I have a really hard time accepting that for each pension account that one owns form 3520 is required each year. let us say that one has 2-4 pension accounts from different employers. The we are talking 200 hours worth of reporting each year?? That is month and a half of full time employment.

I also find a lot of online information with regards to form 8621 als quite ambiguous and confusing.

When own tries to begin to fathom these forms it becomes very clear that these forms are designed for people with a team of tax lawyers at their service and are not meant for those of us leading ordinary lives not totally devoted to only dealing with ones taxes.

If I understood Bev right in one of her posts, she just indicates interest earned on a single line on the 1040 and does not worry about all these special forms.

It just seems completely unreasonable that every expat joe schmo who more than likely has pension savings should be expected to do these very complicated forms.

Nothing is written about them in pub 54. All the stuff the FATCA form and the FBAR are there but none of this other nonsense.

I really do not even know what a trust really is but if I get it right, we are talking about US people sitting in the US forming trusts offshore and then placing all of their assets into a trust in order to hide them.

This is not what anyone who has simple IRA type accounts is anywhere close to doing.

Both the forms 3520 and 8621 are relatively new forms, so a certain amount of confusion is to be expected. The forms are designed to ferret out those taxpayers using overseas investment accounts to hide (or "shelter") income from the IRS. And precisely as you say, the legislation was supposed to deal with "US people sitting in the US forming trusts offshore and then placing all of their assets into a trust in order to hide them."

I don't file the special forms because I don't have pension funds or investments outside the US - only bank accounts. (Just lucky, I guess.) The only pension stuff I have here in France is my eligibility for the French national pension system - and that isn't reportable, at least not until I start drawing benefits.

If your pension funds fall under some sort of pension savings plan legally recognized by the government where you reside (or where you are taxed as a resident), I'd try reporting them on a plain old FBAR filing - labeling them as "pension fund" or using the name of the program where you live - and giving the high balance for the year. That way you're not hiding anything. I'd also read through the IRS publications on Retirement funds very carefully to see if your funds qualify for treatment as retirement funds or annuities when you start taking distributions - and if they do, handle the interest each year as advised in those publications.

The fact that they are employer funds should mean that they're exempt from the extra forms - and it's possible that if any of your employers have a US presence, they've already filed the necessary disclosures with the IRS. The key thing is to disclose fully, but do whatever is necessary to characterize the pension funds as other than the nasty PFICs or whatever else it is they're hunting for. If and when they raise a question, the one thing they won't be able to accuse you of is that of hiding assets or income.
Cheers,
Bev