This is a guest post by David Reed. (Thanks David!)
Taxes can be daunting, but luckily in this
day and age there are several outlets for getting assistance. Before we get started I have to tell you
first and foremost, I am NOT a tax professional. The information included in this post should
not be taken as authoritative or all-inclusive.
If you have questions about your taxes or are unsure in any way contact
a tax professional. For this post I will
be using the IRS information posted here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p54.pdf All page numbers listed are from this
document.
Now that the legal bit is out of the way
lets get to work. I am going to assume
you have filed your taxes before in the States and understand the general
process. I will assume you know how to
fill out a general 1040 or 1040EZ form using an online program (Like Turbotax)
before and don’t need a step by step walk
through. The purpose of this post is to
take you through the Expatriate process which is just a couple of extra steps.
First, the federal government states that
there are only five different programs that they approve for doing your taxes
online. However, they don’t tell you which programs these are.
I have found two of these: Turbotax and Taxact. I have used Turbotax in the past and found it
very simple and intuitive but it costs $30 to file your state taxes. This year I used Taxact and although it only
costs about $15 to file your state taxes, it isn’t quite as intuitive as Turbotax.
