Sep 13, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes
Great article on how to protect yourself from ID theft (and having your tax return rejected due to duplicate filing) The ID thieves have found easy money at the IRS. With your social security number and name, anyone can file a return claiming a tax refund. The ID...
Sep 12, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes
Hi, In the post Overstayed Your Welcome? “Substantial Presence” in the USA & Foreign Teacher, Student, Trainee or Government Employee in the US? How to Prevent US Taxation on Your Worldwide Income , Virginia La Torre Jeker J.D. describes the substantial presence...
Sep 10, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes
Hello everyone, I just came across the Forbes article Scariest Tax Form? Skip It, And IRS Can Audit Forever and while I agree with Robert Wood and form 5471 is indeed scary, I would like to nominate another form for this contest 😉 That is the form 8621, looks just as...
Sep 10, 2014 | Filing Your Taxes Late
This is the manual used by IRS agents to basically do their job, the IRM is here. The interesting part is that somebody submitted amended returns (1040X) with more than 5 informational returns (defined as Forms 3520, 3520-A, 5471, 5472, 8938, 926, or 8621) would be...
Sep 10, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes, Renouncing U.S. Citizenship
Hi, As many of you know, the Department of State has instituted a $450 user fee in 2010 charged to people who renounced US citizenship. More recently, they increased the fee to 2,350. As was to be expected, some discussion regarding the rationale of charging a use fee...
Sep 9, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes
Hi, A while back, I saw the article Latest Foreign Earned Income Exclusion statistics: in five years, IRS offshore crusades added a hundred thousand ordinary new filers who don’t owe any U.S. tax, which I found fascinating. The number of returns filed claiming the...
Sep 6, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes
Hi, A few days ago, I read the following article from John Richardson When it comes to FATCA, there are four kinds of *Americans Abroad* …there are really four kinds of U.S. Taxable Persons abroad. Each one of them has his own set of problems. … They can be grouped as...
Sep 5, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes, Renouncing U.S. Citizenship
As seen on Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/15/dear-mr-president-why-im-leaving-america/ : I received a copy of this letter, and think it is worth reproducing in full: “Dear Mr. President, I am writing with a heavy heart as I, my husband, and our...
Sep 5, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes
As seen on the Maple Sandbox: There is a bit of anxiety concerning what happens at the US border once you have a CLN or once you’ve applied for one. Or for that matter, if you have a Canadian passport that shows a US birthplace, have no US passport and don’t want...
Sep 3, 2014 | Personal U.S. expat taxes, Renouncing U.S. Citizenship
The number of Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship stayed near an all-time high in the first half of the year before rules that make it harder to hide assets from tax authorities came into force (FATCA – Effective Date July 1, 2014). Each quarter the U.S....
