Back to paper filing for US taxes

[mtbc]

Filing taxes is on paper for me this year. After Mint Mobile ended their previous international roaming, I allowed my US cellphone plan to lapse. Although the IRS typically expects expats to file taxes, its services also generally require them to have a US telephone number. When they can make it easier for expats to actually deal with them then they won't have to process my paper mail any more. As it is, it helps to be able to attach a separate page anyway because Form 1116 Part II doesn't have enough space for reporting monthly salary deposits. If I end up working as a contractor later this year then I may also have to start attaching a form from the UK's Home Office showing that I am not liable for Self Employment tax.

Comments

[thewayne]

Try FreetaxUSA.com, I think they allow you to authenticate via email. I did not see an 1116, not familiar with that one. You might sign up and then get on their chat help, which I found to be very useful. They also filed my state form for free. I found them very refreshing and much less expensive than a certain group of blockheads.

[mtbc]

Thanks! Unfortunately, they can't even cope with 2555, which changes a ton (you'll see on worksheet decision points, do you file a 2555?). Once you're into the brave new world of foreign income, things get very much hairier.

Incidentally, my first wife worked for that certain group for a while, she found their software terrible. She could prepare taxes just fine for people on the IRS forms, their proprietary software was just making it confusing for her in trying to follow its own path.

[thewayne]

Yeah, I guess foreign stuff would make it a lot more complicated.  I kinda dread that when/if I start it.

[mtbc]

It's a time-consuming pain but something you can wrangle, and you can (a) avoid things that'd complicate it further, (b) have an easier time once next year is like last year (mine isn't quite because I've bumped above a new threshold).