I n this issue of TIPS, this tax column will address a few of the filing concerns of U.S. citizens and other U.S. tax-payers overseas. T here are many peculiarities that attach to being Expatriate Americans, and the IRS counts high among the most peculiar. T he greatest difficulty with these forms is not the requirement to report your income and deductible expenses to the IRS, but the inability of that organization to write instructions in any language approaching remotely English. Most of us are accustomed to translating government regulations and instructions into something useable. But when the fat envelope from the IRS hits the desk, otherwise intelligent women and men find themselves afflicted by the April 15th Syndrome.
Brain cells stop functioning, pocket calculator batteries die, eyes mysteriously de-focus.
S ome help is at hand. I will examine a number of filing problems and opportunities and discuss, in more or less plain English, how you can deal with them. Not every column will apply to every reader. There's no help for it. Not all of us have children, or a house rented out back in the States, or enough allowable deductions to file a Schedule A Itemized Deductions claim.