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 12

At least once a year, every year, for the quarter of a century I’ve been working overseas, I get a telephone call from someone who was referred by a mutual acquaintance. The person calling me would sheepishly tell me that he or she has a problem. What’s the problem, I ask. I haven’t filed my income taxes, he or she states. How long, I ask……. Well the longest time I’ve ever heard, in response, has been 37 years. If you have consistently had an annual tax bill due to the IRS, you are going to have some problems and you’d best consult someone to assist you. If, on the other hand, you have been consistently earning a salary overseas that is under the yearly maximum foreign earned income exclusion – if that’s your case, then no sweat – file for a few years of past due returns as well as the current year. This was the ‘unofficial’ way of doing things, for years. Then, on 18 June 2014, the IRS announced Streamlined Procedures for legitimate expatriates (with residency requirements just a bit more stringent than those one follows for the foreign earned income exclusion), with three years of tax returns and six years of FinCEN114 reporting as part of the requirements and certifying, through a new form, Form 14653, that the filer is non-willfully neglect in prior non-filings or incorrect filings. There’s a whole lot more detail about this program in a separate section of this book……read it – it could be quite beneficial to you.

If you have been around the world, living outside of the states for a while and you have a tax preparer doing your tax return for you, then it’s the bona fide resident that you are, my friend, and this is the way you’ve been filing – even if you didn’t realize that this is what your tax preparer has been listing for you, year after year after year. What’s that? You don’t look at the tax return that’s been prepared for you? Yeah, I’d like to say: ‘Shame on you!’ but let’s face it – very few people actually look at their tax return. This is the sad state of affairs we’ve come to, vis-a-vis the U.S. tax system: it is a system that has become so convolutedly impossible to understand that most filers simply sign and never look. You are signing this to be a true, complete and full return - you have a liability, if nothing else, to actually look at that bleeping return - even if you do not understand it....and if you do not understand it, then ask questions - this is part of what you have been paying for!!! You have no excuse for not looking at what you’ve been signing, attesting to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…..because the penalty for not telling the whole truth could be costly….. For all intents and purposes, if you are legitimately a ‘lower end’ (income-wise) expat, you are fulfilling your legal responsibilities by filing an annual individual income tax return. Yet, in all likelihood, since you are overseas, you file the return by hard copy, not eFiling your return. True, in the future, this will be changing, as all firms preparing 11 returns or over MUST eFile……unless each and every one of my clients signs a letter of understanding about the differences between eFiling and that old fashioned hard copy way. Me? I simply choose NOT to eFile either for myself or my clients. Call me a luddite, call me ‘computer challenged’, call me what you will but I would rather submit a hard copy of a return, knowing that I am aiding the process of screwing up a system that already is overloaded with far too much paper and has little capability of handling much more. Yet it is not only your patriotic duty but your legal responsibility to file, so don’t sweat not eFiling (which you are compelled to do, regardless, for FinCEN114), sign and send in that hard copy of your return - and keep a copy of that return along with your with proof of mailing, because the U.S. government loses things, too – they lose things far more than they’ll ever willingly admit!!