2011 Taxes in Turbo Tax

[Justine+David 218]

David and I filed with his overseas income in 2010 using turbotax and had no issues. There were quite a few more forms, but everything worked out okay; sorry you're having troubles...

[Nich-Nick 3,353]

Thanks to the walk through we got the return completed, although the next day the IRS sent us a rejection with maybe as many as 30 things they didn't like. Mostly stuff around the exemption on my wages from before I moved, so it's a good thing we have until April to complete it. I never thought I'd miss HMRC

TurboTax does a check to see if your return is done properly. Did you correct all issues?

And most important is you can NOT e-file this year because of the election to be treated as a resident alien for tax purposes and the required signed statement.

[himher 634]

That percentage is determined by the "physical presence" test. Your "physical presence" date starts 330 days before you entered the US, which for you as I recall includes half of 2010 and half of 2011. You are allowed to exclude the percentage of $96000 that the "physical presence" outside the US in 2011 entitles you to exclude and you were out approximately 50% of the year. When you supply your entry and exit dates into and out of the US you should see that approximately $48,000 were excluded/tax protected.

To take the exclusion - you must have been out of the country 330/365 continuous days.

You can efile - we e-filed in 2008 for 2007 and my wife had zero presence in the US in 2007. The only thing that prevents e-filing in turbotax is if you are filing with a foreign address (aka we just paper filed our taxes for 2011 because we are still overseas).

In 2010 we filed 2009 taxes on physical presence > 330/365 days out of the country and took the whole exclusion. In 2011, because we surrendered the green card in 2010, we filed as overseas residents and took the exclusion, and we filed as overseas residents this year for 2011. Every year I treat my wife as resident for tax purposes / declare her income but we have never had any problem with either turbotax or the exclusion calculation. Sorry you are having problems. I know about it because it's my 4th year to take/calculate foreign earned income exclusion (once for her, three times for me) so I have gotten pretty good at it LOL

Is that what it does? How is that percentage determined?

[ZedbraGuy 6]

I still don't understand why we can't e-file when so many other people don't have a problem

We still haven't filed yet, we realised we'd left something out so we need to amend it before we print it all out again, hopefully will do that this weekend

[felb 0]

I just e-filed ours with turbotax, even with the foreign income exclusion. I'm not sure why you're having problems but it could be because of the multiple issues you have.

[ZedbraGuy 6]

We filed a couple of weeks ago, and the IRS have since cashed the cheque. We're now hoping that this means they're happy and we can forget about it.

Hopefully next year will be less complicated, I'm living and working in the US and my foreign savings are a little smaller than they were since we bought a car

[rick313 5]

I just completed our taxes using Turbo Tax. Nick-Nick has posted in several previous threads and is a great resource for these issues. Since my wife had no W-2, we just reported her foreign income in the foreign income exemption section, and it ran pretty smoothly. Essentially, we reported her income, and then excluded it under the foreign income exemption.

We are paper filing as we need to send in a letter declaring that she is to be treated as a US resident for tax purposes. Otherwise, we would have e-filed. Hopefully our refund will come soon. Good luck all!

[kzielu 1,147]

Ok - maybe someone here will have the clue - I have a W-2 with US earned income and put it into Turbotax with all necessary data (employer adress and ID) as well as foreign earned income that I am reporting and excluding (most of the year was outside US). For some reason Turbotax is treating US income reported on W-2 as foreign earned, adds to foreign income, reports on form 2555 and tries to exclude it (which really shouldn't be). Anyone has an idea why it is treated like that ? What triggers that ?

[Nich-Nick 3,353]

Ok - maybe someone here will have the clue - I have a W-2 with US earned income and put it into Turbotax with all necessary data (employer adress and ID) as well as foreign earned income that I am reporting and excluding (most of the year was outside US). For some reason Turbotax is treating US income reported on W-2 as foreign earned, adds to foreign income, reports on form 2555 and tries to exclude it (which really shouldn't be). Anyone has an idea why it is treated like that ? What triggers that ?

I did a brief try at a return where both had W2 income and one had foreign income.

Entered the W2 incomes in the guided interview. Then when it asked if there was any additional income I went off the interview way to I'll find it myself. then way at the bottom under less common income started the interview for foreign income to enter that. It did not combine the US wages with the foreign earned. It only excluded the foreign earned.

There's a lot of questions asked so it is impossible to know what you might have done to make TT treat your US income with the foreign. Guesses:

Did you live in another state or country besides [your state]--yes

Date you became a resident of [your state]-date you came to US

After you enter your W2, there's a page that says "Do any of these apply to this W2?" and eleven check boxes.

Did you check "I worked outside the US"? If you did, uncheck that. The question is about the US W2 job and you didn't work it outside the US. Probably you will check the last one "None of the above" unless you had tips or something.

In foreign section, date you quit being resident of Poland--date you came to US.

Anything about being a resident alien--say yes to resident alien for the whole year because that's your status to IRS based on the election to be treated that way (write statement) because of marriage to a USC.

Anything about maintaining a house abroad, etc--say no because you don't get to claim housing on income tax.

Exclusion based on--bonafide resident

OK, I can't go through the whole thing because I think the walk-through covered all the foreign part

Other than that, it would be hard for me to know where you got off track. If you just randomly guessed at anything, post the questiona and where found (under Wages or Foreign) and I'll try to help.