Small tax complaint

[mtbc]

I drafted a letter to my Representative about what a waste of time these tax contortions are. Although I appear to need to file twelve forms and schedules this year, my income would have to double before I actually owed any Federal taxes. Between that and financial institutions mostly not wanting to touch American expats with a bargepole, Federal reporting requirements make life overseas needlessly difficult for us.

Comments

[wpadmirer]

I don't blame you. That's just crazy. I mean, I can understand maybe have one or two forms extra, but it seems like you had twelve!

[mtbc]

In fairness, it's maybe just four forms extra for being overseas and the redesign of the 1040 causes one of those but a couple other of the extra forms make the rest of them irrelevant! Here I am carefully converting currencies, moving and adding totals and whatnot to work out numbers from which I will then be instructed to subtract much larger numbers leaving zero. It wastes my time and theirs too. I wonder if they imagine that Americans with overseas funds are all wealthy or something. (If I were wealthy, I could afford somebody qualified to do the forms for me and I might actually owe tax!)