My husband is US citizen (he moved to the UK when he was under 5 years old) we own a UK ltd company (just the two of us) as we are both contractors. We have found out that he needs to file US taxes. He will only be required to do the last 3 years (streamlined filing). has anybody been in a similar situation? rules changed in 2017 which by the looks of it make it seem more complex.
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I've been in exactly the same situation. My suggestion is to get a accountant in the US to do all that stuff for you, as it can be a bit of a minefield.
The people I used in the past (I gave up my US citizenship) were:
Taxes For Expats - Top Rated Tax Service for Americans Abroad.
But if you do a search in Google you'll find plenty of other options.
There's also this thread talking about this very thing:
https://www.contractoruk.com/forums/...acting-uk.html -
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Well done you for marrying an American citizen. I did the same. I bet my American spouse is better looking than yours and I reject all allegations of bias.
In addition to the thread linked above, this thread was started by an American citizen wanting to contract here and might hold some useful info for you.
I hope you didn't have a lot of funds in your company when 'Tax Reform' passed, or the GILTI tax might hit you hard.
Things not always mentioned:
1. If you use foreign income exclusion on your US taxes, you can't file for the additional child credit. If you use foreign tax credit you can.
2. If you aren't an American citizen you don't have to report your income, and he can file separately. But if you do that, you can't claim the additional child credit. So if you have children it may be to your advantage to file joint and report your income.
3. A word about pensions -- you may want to put more in your pension than his. As things stand right now, his pension (including the 25% tax free here) will be taxable in the US when he starts drawing it.
4. Do you know about the FBAR filing reporting his non-US financial accounts every year? If not, you have yet another delight awaiting you.
5. Did you know that if you remortgage, and the exchange rate has changed between the date you took out the mortgage and the date you paid it off, that you might have a taxable 'foreign currency gain' on your US taxes? Because for them, taking out a foreign mortgage is actually taking out a short currency position, and paying it off is closing out your short position.
Also, the Duchess of Sussex (and any children she has) is an American citizen and there's been a lot in the press about American taxation and the Royal Family. Also, the soon-to-be Prime Minister (probably) was an accidental American who renounced his citizenship because of just this kind of nonsense, and if he ends up Prime Minister, it will be even more publicity at how bad the IRS situation is for expats and accidental Americans. Also, a bill was actually introduced in Congress by George Holding of North Carolina to try to at least partially fix the mess. So with all the publicity perhaps things will improve. I'm hoping so, I'd love to be pumping up my wife's pension since mine is nearing the lifetime max, but I'm hesitant to feed the US a bunch of taxes when she collects it. Of course, we could still retire there.Comment
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Feel free to come back with follow-up questions, will try to help.Comment
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thank you very much for your words. The whole thing is a little confusing, have had some great info today and we can do more research over the weekend. so may end up back here then, have taken on board that it is probably better to use a tax attorney based in the USA.Originally posted by WordIsBond View Post
would be nice to get this resolved soon.Comment
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