Expat Business Owners and Freelancers

U.S. expats can deduct ordinary and necessary business expenses—including software, professional fees, equipment, marketing and qualifying home-office costs—from their self-employment income. These deductions can reduce both income tax and self-employment tax, while other tax breaks only affect income tax. The distinction is easy to miss. At Bright!Tax, we regularly see freelancers abroad claim the Foreign […]

The digital nomad lifestyle looks beautifully simple from the outside: a laptop, a passport, decent Wi-Fi, and the smug little joy of answering emails from somewhere warmer. And yes, the freedom is real. But so is the admin. Once you start working across borders, the things that used to sit quietly in the background — […]

Running a business abroad comes with its fair share of challenges—unexpected paperwork, changing compliance rules, and the occasional late-night Google search about U.S. requirements you hadn’t thought about. And one obligation that has repeatedly stumped many American entrepreneurs is the Beneficial Ownership Information Report (BOIR).  BOIR is a requirement for certain businesses to disclose information […]

As a digital nomad, the world is your office—but that doesn’t mean your taxes get to travel as freely as you do. If you’re a U.S. citizen living abroad, you’re still required to pay taxes on your income, even if you’re working from a beach in Bali or a café in Paris. Understanding digital nomad […]

If you own a business overseas, you may already know that the U.S. can tax your share of its profits — even if you never transfer a dollar back to the United States. For many business owners, this results in a U.S. tax bill on top of foreign taxes already paid. A Section 962 election […]

At tech companies, startups, large publicly traded companies, and many other employers, incentive stock options (ISOs) are a common offering. If you’re a US expat with ISOs, you may stand to benefit financially from them in a significant way — especially if you keep ISO taxation in mind. The way the US taxes ISOs can […]

At a summit on Saturday June 4 2021, the G7 group of countries agreed to establish a global minimum corporate tax rate, as well as a common way to tax the biggest international digital services companies. Background In the digital age, companies can sell services online in other countries without having a physical presence there. […]

The US tax system is unusual, in that the US taxes based on citizenship rather than residence. This means that all US citizens have to file US taxes on their worldwide income, even if they have to file foreign taxes too. This includes Americans living abroad, who have the same annual US filing and reporting […]