Am I exposed to another five-figure tax bill? This is not good news.

Many Americans working abroad may be hit with significantly higher tax bills under the new tax law signed Wednesday by President Bush. In some cases, high-paid expatriates could owe tens of thousands of dollars in additional taxes.

Among those most likely to get hit are Americans in countries with high housing costs -- such as Hong Kong and Singapore -- and whose companies don't help cover the additional tax burdens of living abroad, accountants say. For companies with special expatriate tax packages, the additional costs could prompt them to send fewer workers abroad -- and possibly bring some back home.

Under the old law, Americans working abroad could exclude as much as $80,000 of their foreign-earned compensation for 2006. Under the new law, that figure rises to $82,400 for this year -- but income above that level is now typically subject to higher effective tax rates than before. The new law also greatly reduces the maximum amount of housing costs that overseas workers may exclude or deduct.

Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the provision, which is retroactive to the start of this year, will raise an estimated $2.1 billion in revenue for the U.S. Treasury over the next 10 years. The new law also protects millions of people from getting stung by the alternative minimum tax this year and extends the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends through the year 2010, instead of letting them expire after 2008.

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Consider a married U.S. citizen in Saudi Arabia with $150,000 in base pay, $30,000 in taxable foreign housing expenses (paid for by the employer), and $15,000 in interest income from a U.S. bank. Under the new law, that person's tax tab likely will jump by about $9,500 to around $22,500, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers analysts. In Hong Kong, the additional tax hit could exceed $20,000, it found.