Tax Rules and Compliance

Selling investments abroad can already feel like enough paperwork for one lifetime. You sell the asset, report the gain, brace yourself for the capital gains tax, and think you’ve reached the end of the story. Then the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT, shows up with a second calculator. AMT is a parallel U.S. tax calculation […]

Leaving New York doesn’t automatically mean you’re done with New York income taxes. Even after moving abroad, you can still be treated as a resident — and taxed like one — depending on how your ties to the state are structured.  This is because the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance applies its […]

There’s no single IRS exchange rate for every expat tax situation. Convenient? No. Manageable? Yes. The right rate depends on what you’re reporting: income, a foreign bank account, an asset sale, foreign taxes paid, or a capital gain. U.S. tax forms want everything in dollars, while your actual life may be happening in euros, pesos, […]

FBAR filing comes down to one key question: did the combined value of your foreign financial accounts exceed $10,000 at any point during the year? If so, you may need to report them — even if no single account ever crossed that threshold on its own. The important thing to know is that FBAR isn’t […]

Miss the tax filing deadline? Take a breath. What happens next mostly comes down to one thing: whether you owe money or whether you’re due a tax refund. That distinction matters. If the IRS owes you, the situation is usually less painful. But if you owe unpaid federal income tax, leaving it too long can […]

It’s not always easy to get detailed information about green cards. The US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) website can be technical and dense, which may leave you even more confused. As a dedicated tax firm for US immigrants and Americans abroad, we’re well familiar with green cards — so we’ve put together a brief, easy-to-understand guide.

Living abroad doesn’t exempt you from filing a U.S. federal income tax return, but it can complicate the details. One of the most common issues expats run into has nothing to do with foreign income or tax credits – it’s identification.  If your spouse or dependent doesn’t have a Social Security number (SSN), you may […]

Many Americans living abroad rely on the Foreign Tax Credit (FTC) to prevent double taxation. You pay foreign income tax to your country of residence and then claim a credit to reduce your U.S. tax liability on the same foreign source income when you file your U.S. income tax return. But here’s where many expats […]

Transferring money internationally sounds simple right up until the fees, exchange rates, and “small” charges start quietly taking bites out of the total. For expats, those losses add up fast. Rent, family support, savings transfers, mortgage payments—when money crosses borders regularly, the difference between a decent transfer and a bad one can mean hundreds or […]