2. The fourth amendment doesn't apply to data you're legally compelled to surrender to the government. By your logic, every form 1040 that's ever been filed is a fourth amendment violation.
3. The eighth amendment has almost never been used in a constitutional case involving excessive fines. When it has, the court has primarily used it to prevent pseudo-fines that aren't really called fines in order to skirt the eighth amendment.
Sure, FATCA might be annoying, but a legal challenge has almost nothing going for it. Don't get your hopes up.
No one running for any office cares one bit about Americans overseas.
It's very easy to get support for 'sticking it to those tax dodgers overseas' and very hard to get people to care about the tax situation of people they don't know and feel they can't relate to.
It may be no surprise that FATCA and FBAR present several consitutitional issues. Chief among them are the following:
-As the IRS can unilaterally sign unauthorized pseudo-treaties with foreign governments, the Senate’s role in ratifying treaties is bypassed
-Fourth amendment: Private financial data is collected indiscriminately
-Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, as well as excessive fines, may be leveraged when compliance is not perfect, and without Rule of Law provisions to ensure any protection for the accused. (My recapitulation of points in [1] )
Thankfully, several large scale legal challenges on exactly these grounds are now underway- by Sen Rand Paul and 6 other expats [2] , and perhaps even more promisingly, by super lawyer Jim Bopp (who took down Mc-Cain Feingold [3]).
You can also donate a small amount to support the latter case: https://fatcalegalaction.com/contribute/ Thanks for reading, lets not give up hope, and remain fired up to the correctness of this cause because, in the words of Bopp - “The U.S. Constitution protects every citizen’s liberty and freedom, while FATCA undermines both,”
We deserve better!
Signed, An American living in Paris
[1] http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/18253...
[2] http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/features.nsf/Features/9D07FB4...
[3] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/5/superlawyer-j...