Читать книгу Larry's 2016 U.S. Tax Guide 'Supplement' for U.S. Expats, Green Card Holders and Non-Resident Aliens in User Friendly English - Laurence E. 'Larry' - Страница 10

Your tax home is usually in the vicinity of where you work. It does not necessarily have to be your family home. Your family home might be in California. You maintain that residence and have intentions of returning there, years from now. Yet that family residence is halfway around the world and as you are not living there, it is not necessarily your tax home, anymore. O.K., you arrived from San Francisco to your new home in Hong Kong on 1 August 2015. Through 31 July 2015, your tax and family home was San Francisco. To meet the requirements for excluding either a portion or the total of 5/12 (1 August – 31 December 2014) of your non-U.S. earned income, you must qualify by meeting the physical presence test for 2015.

Let us get back to that U.S. teacher, as an example. He or she came to his/her new land on or about 1 August 2015 to begin work shortly thereafter. To qualify your August – December 2015 income tax excludable for your 2015 tax return you must meet the requirements of the physical presence test for your first year. (1 August 2015 – 31 July 2016). To put it simply, you CANNOT be in the U.S. for 35 days or more during that period of time. Less is best! If you go back home over the Xmas vacation, then you’d better start counting days if your school year ends in mid-June: if you exceed your 35 days maximum before 31 July 2016, then you will be taxed in full on your overseas income – now you do not want that to happen, do you? If you meet these rather strict requirements for the physical presence test during your first year of residency overseas, then you have a choice of either filing your tax return on time (15 April or, with automatic extension, 15 June), without being eligible for the exclusion and then filing an amended return, requesting a refund of what you earlier might have paid on your initial return when you file upon reaching eligibility. You want my advice? Unless you’ve got a very large withholding refund coming, then go on extension and file one return, as soon as possible, after you’ve reached ‘eligibility’. File for an additional extension before 15 June and then file only one return, as soon as you are formally eligible – it is a heck of a lot easier – trust me!!! Anyhow, Hong Kong teacher, file your return after 1 August 2016, with that return on extension....and it’ll be a veritable ‘piece of cake’ for you, now and into the future! Once you’ve met the physical presence test requirements for 2015, if you are overseas and working for 2016, then you are then more than likely to be eligible for bona fide residency classification – and this is both a heck of a lot easier to maintain and keep within limits of – and amazingly flexible for you – especially if you are a teacher not working but entitled to spend future entire summers back home in the U.S. without jeopardizing your ability to take advantage of the foreign earned income exclusion!