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Thanks for the thread! I've got a lot of research, reading up, and questions to ask when I get some more free time! Here's one for starters: until now, I've been claiming the FEIE here in Japan as my employer covers all my taxes, which aren't too high to begin with. Is the foreign tax credit a 1:1 thing? I'm moving to Australia (ostensibly for good) early next year, and taxes there are probably always going to be higher than in the US. Assuming the exchange rate doesn't crater, I would hopefully be exceeding the ~$USD97k for the FEIE by mid-career. Is one more or less in the clear as far as Uncle Sam is concerned if you're paying higher taxes abroad and filing for the foreign tax credit? Also, Florida residency  zmcnulty posted:Alternatively if he wants the transaction to stay under the radar -- anything over JPY 1mio requires a report to National Tax Agency -- international postal money order is better. Can get those at the post office, up to $700 each. Sending multiple SWIFTs for JPY 999,000 for example raises a lot of red flags. Also, thanks for this! What sort of fees are there for international postal money orders in Japan, and what's the rate like?
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Jun 16, 2014 07:28
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USAA (if you can get it) is pretty dope as well.
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Jun 17, 2014 07:28
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Just something I was curious about : for those of you freelancing abroad, was it pretty straightforward to get out of paying the self-employment tax to the IRS? IRS link
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Jan 13, 2015 16:23
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Bump: US goons, who do you bank with? I thought USAA was pretty good for reimbursing you for ATM fees, but I'm finding out that their wire transfer fees are not great ($45 a pop, even for domestic), plus it appears I have to call them every time I want to do it. On top of that, it looks like they may have messed up and transferred about half the amount I told them to  Ideally, I'd be looking for something without any monthly/annual fees, where everything can be done online, and transfer fees are low. Due to the low fees and significantly more favourable rate, I'm using OZforex to do the transfer (they have a bank in the US, actually the same one USAA uses for their wire transfers, so it counts as a domestic wire when I'm sending it abroad).
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Mar 9, 2015 01:35
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Sorry, I could have written that a lot more clearly: I found a remittance company that gives a better rate than any of the banks seem to, and they've got an intermediary bank in the US they use to accept transfers, so it'd be domestic transfers I'm looking at rather than international.
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Mar 9, 2015 02:43
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Oakland Martini posted:Anyone have any good approaches to paying off U.S. credit cards (and other U.S. bills)? I'm sick of paying fees to wire money from my Canadian bank (CIBC) to my American bank (Wells Fargo). I'd get rid of the U.S. bank account entirely if I could. Can you get a credit card in Canada with no foreign transaction fees?
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May 20, 2015 22:40
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So is there no way out of capital gains tax on selling some mutual funds if I live abroad? I could have sworn there was some sort of exclusion, but having a quick look at it again this afternoon that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm doing my Master's abroad and have no other income this year, will probably need to be selling stuff off early next year to pay tuition/living expenses. I know there's an exception for Roth IRA withdrawals to pay educational expenses, but my university isn't one of the ones the federal government recognises as "qualified".
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Jul 26, 2015 04:15
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80k posted:With no other income, and with longterm cap gains untaxed at the lowest tax bracket, you would need to be selling a lot of mutual funds with very low cost basis shares to worry about paying substantial taxes. Take a look at how much you are selling and do a mock tax return to see. Ahh, that must have been what I found before! So as long as I keep it under $36,900 (top of the 15% bracket) I should be fine? I assume any foreign earned income wouldn't count against that total (gonna start job hunting now that I'm back from visiting my partner overseas), right? The latter is more of an academic question than anything; I'd be thrilled to be making enough to offset my modest cost of living, and could split the sell-offs between this tax year and next if I needed to.
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Jul 26, 2015 08:54
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I've spent all afternoon digging around on social security/tax stuff, and figured I might as well share as there appears to be a fair amount of misinformation floating around elsewhere: If there's a totalization agreement in effect between the US and the country you're living in (seems like a lot of the cool countries have one), it's likely you wouldn't have to pay self-employment taxes on freelance income earned from the US while living there. I was pretty convinced I'd be on the hook for it based on everything I was reading from doofuses on Metafilter, etc, but actually checking the SSA's webpage made it quite clear. Fair warning that this may be related to Australia not mandating superannuation payments for the self-employed, however. Another cool and good thing I found when reading the totalization agreements is that you can use foreign work history to qualify for US SS benefits, although you probably need at least some legitimate US SS credits earned (in the case of Australia it's 6, which amounts to $1220/each, at a rate of no more than 4 per year). I was having trouble finding specifics on the calculations used, but it sounds like the benefit won't be much in most cases; it's reduced by the percentage of foreign credits used to qualify, and you would averaging in a lot of "zero" values in that 35 year benefit calculator thing as it appears to only concern US-taxed income. Still, it's better than the "nothing' I originally figured I'd be entitled to... I was thinking of going back to the US and working for 2-3 years as a goodwill gesture to my partner, and at least I know now that I wouldn't be totally flushing those SS payments down the toilet in terms of my own retirement (just mostly, sigh). Not to say that even a very limited payout like that wouldn't be means-testeed away at some point, but still might be worth looking into for some of you.
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Oct 25, 2015 06:48
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Gold and a Pager posted:My understanding of totalization agreements is that their main purpose is so that if you work for a while in the US, but not enough to qualify for SS because you then moved to another country, but also did not work long enough to qualify for the local SS, then you would still be able to get your government SS benefit because, between your payments to the two countries, you paid enough to qualify. It also allows for Americans who are sent to a foreign country to work for a limited period of time to be exempt from local SS taxes and continue to just pay them back in America. Finally, they mean that you don't have to worry about paying two different SS taxes if you move to another country for a longer period of time/work for a foreign company. Yeah, I was doing reading up on that the other day and you've pretty much got it. I didn't read the Netherlands one, but if it's like the one with Australia, basically Boris's time working in the Netherlands would count towards the credits he needs to qualify for US SS, although he probably needs at least some genuine US earned credits, too (6?). The way an SS benefit is calculated is averaging the 35 highest years of taxed income, I assume if he uses the FTC he could also count foreign earned income towards that? I'm not making any great bets on Social Security being there when I retire either, but if it's not costing anything extra, can't hurt to try.
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Oct 29, 2015 22:19
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