Preparing to file 2016 US taxes
Feb. 19th, 2017 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcI have waited for long enough for forms to arrive so it is time to work on our US tax return. Today I have been gathering the relevant information: dates and amounts of payments of salary, interest, etc. As usual I took the exchange rate information from the Federal Reserve Board's G.5 releases and, goodness, Brexit has made a difference: for May 2016 I am using a rate of $1.4524 per pound sterling and for October I am using $1.2330: ouch. I suppose it will be good for exports. Of course, from a US tax point of view it is good if one's capital gains in the UK do not coincide with a rise in the pound's value so that fall will have been good for some people.
To make my tax filing easier I avoid owning equities and suchlike: I do not want to be trying to figure out how to properly report them as foreign trusts or whatever they become to the IRS. Fortunately the year 2016 was uneventful and looks to be one of my easiest yet as 2015 included both an interest refund from the IRS and a business trip to a conference in the US at NIST which meant that a fraction of my UK salary was thus earned on US soil and could not be excluded as foreign income. For this past year there are no new complications and I ought to be able to file a simpler version of last year's forms. Once my children have paying jobs I shall have to train them in all this.
To make my tax filing easier I avoid owning equities and suchlike: I do not want to be trying to figure out how to properly report them as foreign trusts or whatever they become to the IRS. Fortunately the year 2016 was uneventful and looks to be one of my easiest yet as 2015 included both an interest refund from the IRS and a business trip to a conference in the US at NIST which meant that a fraction of my UK salary was thus earned on US soil and could not be excluded as foreign income. For this past year there are no new complications and I ought to be able to file a simpler version of last year's forms. Once my children have paying jobs I shall have to train them in all this.
