Bright!Tax US Expat Tax Blog

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.

Missing the tax deadline doesn’t stop you from filing, but what happens next depends largely on whether you owe the IRS or the IRS owes you. If you’re due a refund, you generally won’t face a late-filing penalty; if you owe tax, penalties and interest can build until you file and pay. At Bright!Tax, we […]

Discovering that you should have filed U.S. tax returns, FBARs or international information forms can be unsettling—but non-willful mistakes can often be corrected through the IRS Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures. At Bright!Tax, we help Americans work through this process every day. The streamlined procedures allow eligible taxpayers to correct missed foreign income and reporting without […]

Falling behind on U.S. taxes while living abroad does not automatically mean facing years of penalties. If your mistake was non-willful and you meet the IRS’s non-residency rules, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures let you file overdue or corrected returns and FBARs without the usual failure-to-file, information-return or FBAR penalties. At Bright!Tax, we often work […]

If you failed to report foreign income or accounts because you genuinely misunderstood the rules, the Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures can give you a way to catch up with reduced penalties—or no offshore penalties at all if you qualify for the foreign procedure. At Bright!Tax, we regularly hear from Americans who have lived abroad for […]

If you live in the U.S. and previously filed tax returns without reporting foreign income or financial assets, the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures may let you correct the problem with a single 5% penalty. You must meet the IRS eligibility rules, certify that your conduct was non-willful and submit three years of amended returns plus […]

FATCA exemptions can remove certain foreign accounts and assets from your reporting requirements, saving you from filing paperwork you don’t actually need. Whether one applies depends on what you hold, where it’s held and how the account or institution is classified. The tricky part—and something we regularly untangle with our clients at Bright!Tax—is that FATCA […]