News and Updates

Each year the IRS adjusts tax brackets, the Standard Deduction, and exclusion thresholds for inflation. Last week the IRS announced the new figures for 2020. These will be applied to the year from January 1st to December 31st 2020, the 2020 tax year, for which expats (along with Americans living stateside) will file in 2021. […]

The IRS has released a new draft Form 1040 for 2019 tax year (filing in 2020). While the new form is still in a public consultation phase, it’s notably different from the current Form 1040, which itself was only introduced just in time for the 2018 tax year and was a big departure from the […]

Last week the UK announced former mayor of London Boris Johnson as the country’s new Prime Minister. Few people know though that new UKPM Mr Johnson was until 2016 an American citizen, and that he renounced his US citizenship to avoid having to file US taxes. Mr Johnson was a US citizen by virtue of having […]

The number of Americans living abroad, including expats and Digital Nomads, now totals over nine million. Many of them still receive mail in the US from time to time (or regularly) though, and a Virtual Mailbox Service provides a way for expats to see their US postal mail more or less instantly. The way the […]

The new 2018 IRS Tax Book has confirmed that the IRS continued the trend of auditing a much higher proportion of international tax returns then domestic ones in 2018. While a total of 0.6% of all individual federal income tax returns were audited during the year, the figure for international returns is nearly six times the […]

Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor was born to parents Prince Harry of England and Princess Meghan Markle this week. The baby prince is currently seventh in line to the British throne. But is he British or American (or both), and if he’s American, will he have to pay US taxes? Citizenship based taxation The US has an […]

Brandon Fathy has been named as the latest Bright!Tax Global Scholar Award Winner. Thanks to Bright!Tax’ support, Brandon will be taking up a place at the University of Leicester in the UK to begin a PHD in Archeology in January. The Bright!Tax Global Scholar Program was set up in 2016 to provide opportunities for exceptional […]

Bright!Tax has been shortlisted for the prestigious FEM EMMA Tax Provider of the Year Award for the EMEA region. The Awards ceremony takes place on Friday November 9th at the O2 Intercontinental in London, England.   For the last eight years, the EMMA Awards have recognized excellence and Innovation in the field of Global Mobility […]

Bright!Tax, the leading US expat tax services provider, established its Global Scholar Program in 2016 to help young Americans have the opportunity to study overseas. Awarded biannually, the program has since provided four exceptional young Americans with the opportunity to study abroad. Now, Colorado resident Addison Noel has become the fifth Bright!Tax Global Scholar, and […]

Trump’s 2016 election campaign promised tax reform, and in December 2017, after just under a year in office, he delivered on his campaign promise by signing into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The bill was written and passed quickly, and as any tax cuts had to be funded by other measures, many people’s […]