01/10/2026
Ask any American who’s settled in Italy what brought them here and you’ll hear the same themes: slower days, long mornings at the café, Mediterranean rhythms, the art, the food, and a sense that life runs on a different clock here. Most Americans living in Italy fall into a few camps: remote workers escaping high-cost […]
01/14/2026
Your laptop says “New York,” your laundry says “Lisbon.” Welcome to the club. Thanks to remote everything, plenty of people now work for a U.S. company while living in Spain, Japan, Canada—or wherever the Wi-Fi behaves. Here’s the catch: who you are (U.S. citizen, green card holder, non-U.S. hire, or freelancer) changes the rules. Payroll, […]
02/06/2026
Once upon a time, moving your money overseas meant it could quietly stay overseas. In 2026? Your bank is practically CC’ing the IRS—and its international cousins—before you’ve even filed your own taxes. Thanks to FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), global banking transparency isn’t optional anymore. Banks, investment […]
01/10/2026
The term “California exit tax” gets thrown around like it’s a cover charge to cross the Nevada line. It isn’t. What people are mixing up: (1) a rumor about paying just to leave, (2) splashy wealth-tax proposals that grabbed headlines but didn’t become law, and (3) the perfectly normal rule that California still taxes California-source […]
02/05/2026
You didn’t skip filing your FBAR on purpose. You just didn’t know you had to. Welcome to the club. The FBAR (that’s the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts) is one of the most commonly missed filings among U.S. expats. It’s not part of your tax return. It’s not about owing more money. But […]
02/05/2026
Some IRS forms make your heart sink. This one might make it skip a beat—in a good way. Form 14653 isn’t just paperwork. It’s a strategic reset button for U.S. expats who’ve fallen behind on their taxes. No penalties, no drawn-out negotiations—just a shot at getting compliant under the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, as long […]
02/05/2026
If you’ve ever opened a bank account overseas and been hit with a million questions about your U.S. citizenship, you’ve met FATCA—whether you knew it or not. Short for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, FATCA was born in 2010 when the U.S. government decided it really, really didn’t want to miss out on taxes […]
02/05/2026
Here’s a fun fact no one tells you before moving abroad: you might end up paying into two social security systems at once—your host country and the U.S. Talk about double the paperwork, none of the fun. That’s where totalization agreements (a.k.a. international Social Security agreements) come in. These bilateral deals coordinate the U.S. system […]
02/05/2026
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 […]
02/05/2026
April 15 has a way of sneaking up on all of us. One minute you’re making New Year’s resolutions, and the next you’re staring down the tax deadline, wondering how it got here so fast. If your paperwork is still in limbo—or you’d simply like a little breathing room—the Internal Revenue Service has a safety […]