Form 5471: How US Citizens Tell the IRS About a Foreign Corporation
Dateline: Tbilisi, Georgia Just the other day, we discussed the new requirements for IRS Form 5472 – an informational form for foreign-owned US LLCs. Today, we’re going to take on an equally-complicated form just one number different from 5472: Form 5471. Whereas Form...
How to Avoid Passport Revocation by the IRS
Dateline: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Governments around the world have increasingly been imposing restrictions on both citizenship and obtaining an actual passport to travel on. From Canada’s creation of “second class citizens” to President Trump’s denaturalization of US...
Form 8858: US Taxes on Foreign Disregarded Entities
As an expat or U.S. taxpayer who owns a foreign business or an interest in a foreign business (corporation, partnership or LLC), there are a number of forms that you must complete and file with your standard 1040F income tax return. These forms are typical...
Form 8865: Tax Returns for Foreign Partnerships
As readers of this site know, the United States taxes its citizens (including expats who live and work abroad) and legal permanent residents (LPRs) on their worldwide income. No matter where in the world your income is derived, the US government wants its piece, and...
Form 3520: US Taxes on Gifts and Inheritances
You’ve probably heard the expression that the only two things certain in life are Death and Taxes. The United States’ Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) works very hard at making the second item in that short list true, especially for expats and US foreign...
Form I-407: How to Relinquish Your Green Card
According to the Department of Homeland Security, there were 1.1 million new “Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) – known as Green Card Holders – admitted to the US in 2017. This coveted document is what you need to be a legal resident of the United States....
IRS Currency Exchange Rates for Expat Tax Returns
If you are a US citizen living abroad, you are required to file your annual taxes based on your worldwide income, not merely income earned in the US. This means that any foreign-earned salary, as well as foreign-earned interest, dividends, pensions, capital gains on...
What is an IRS Currency Transaction Report?
Dateline: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Suppose you recently took a trip to Las Vegas, and you got lucky – in fact, you took home more than $10,000 in gambling winnings. If that’s the case, then you likely have a Currency Transaction Report on your tax file with...
Form 8833: How to Claim Income Tax Treaty Benefits
FSay you’re a six- or seven-figure US-based entrepreneur who’s recently brought their business abroad. You find yourself traveling weeks at a time to tend to those businesses, and in the past couple of years, you’ve traveled so many days that you’ve ended...
Banking Privacy: 13 non-CRS countries that don’t exchange information
Dateline: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia As is the case in most countries, Malaysia has made it harder for foreigners to open a bank account in recent years. When I first started exploring this “muddy estuary” six years ago, the process was straightforward but required a few...