I am rerunning an important post from last year about filing U. S. taxes overseas.
I was approached with an offer to do my U.S. taxes last year by Taxes for Expats, a service that specializes in preparing tax returns for U.S. expats. Every U. S. expat living abroad must annually file a U.S. income tax form even if they have made no income in the U. S.
I was already happy with the services of another accountant in Paris, but decided to accept the offer from Taxes for Expats.
Once I accepted I went to their website and filled out an initial form. I received an email from one of their tax consultants who would be handling my tax returns with a brief outline on how the process worked. Once I filled in all the paper work, the turnaround time was fifteen days. Although it was a little complicated, the forms were very thorough. There were a few things I didn’t understand and asked the consultant to explain. She was very prompt with her responses and she explained things clearly. There were also a few things I learned that I didn’t know before, like the IRS requires that you (or your tax preparer) prepare your return according to the U.S. tax year, which means taking your tax statements from your host country for two years and extracting the appropriate information to then plugging it into your U.S. tax return and I have to keep up with all the tax legislation changes happening from one tax year to the next. I also learned there is a special form you have to fill out and send with your foreign bank account info.
My tax accountant here charges 500 euros plus 19.8 VAT. Taxes for Expats charges only $350 and they do a thorough and professional job. I was pleased with their services and would use them again without hesitation.
Thanks for this! I use a U.S. accountant who specializes in expat taxes, but the price keeps going up.
Posted by: Taste of France | May 06, 2016 at 10:05 AM