hobbes79

I spent a while on the IRS website and came to the same conclusion. They actually provided links to sites where you can enter the date of the transaction and it will tell you the exchange rate on that day. Good job, since they were still at about $2 to the pound in Jan '08!

Thanks!

dbj1000

The year I sold my house in the UK and moved a fair chunk of money over, I used the daily published rate on Xe.com and had no issues. Same for the year when I had partial-year income in the UK, and calculated my own average rate for the 4 months to work out my Foreign Earned Income Exemption numbers.

Michael

I think the IRS is pretty lax about this situation unless you abuse the system or had a very large shortfall. One year I had capital gains late in December that caused a shortage in the taxes that I paid for that year. When I did the taxes for that year, I got an estimated tax form printed out. Since I knew that the same situation would not occur the following year, I didn't pay the estimated tax for that year and there wasn't any problem. I suspect that as long as in the following year you pay all your taxes in time (no shortfall), you probably won't have a problem.

As an added note, if you are also paying estimated state taxes during any year and want to use all the payments as a deduction from your federal income for that year, pay all 4 estimated state tax payments prior to the end of the year even though you have until January 15th to pay the last estimated tax. If you pay the last estimated tax in January, you will not be able to deduct that payment from that years federal income but will have to be deducted from the next years income. The last estimated tax paid after January 1st will be used to pay the tax for that year on the state taxes but that payment cannot be used as a deduction from the federal income for that year but will be used in the following year.

dbj1000

Damn! I wish I'd had this advice before December 31st! Oh well, now I'll have to remember to deduct it from my 2009 return.

EDIT: Should have read that more carefully. Texas doesn't have State tax

md95065

OK - I think that I now understand the source of the confusion.

The IRS doesn't "tell you" (or, at least, they have never told me) how much estimated tax to pay - at least not as a specific dollar figure - they just provide work sheets to help you calculate it based on your estimate of what your taxable income is going to be for a particular year. So they have no a priori knowledge of what your estimated tax payments "should" be.

dbj1000

In your case, maybe. In my case, and in the case where you are paying estimated taxes due to an underpayment in the previous year, the IRS tells you how much you must pay each quarter the following year.

We're clearly talking at cross-purposes here.

mojofilter

When my wife was using Turbotax to complete our joint return as US Resident and residential alien (AOS still being processed), it asks my last year’s AGI on my last year’s tax return. What do we put here? (NOTE: there is no option to state no tax return filed by me)

ta,

Paul

hobbes79

Isn't there an option along the lines of "didn't file last year"? That question is to verify it's you when e-filing I believe (I just did mine on Turbo Tax also, and that's the only time that question came up for me).

If their doesn't appear a way round it, I would just print the return and mail it in.

mojofilter

It is for efile, yes. There is no option for didn’t file last year.

mojofilter

We called the nice people at Turbo Tax, we asked the customer service lady our question, she put us on hold.... 30 minutes later she came back and told us that she didn't have an answer for us ???

So we called the IRS and they said just to put "zero" in there .... She said that they'd look up my SSN, work out that I was new to the country..... Put two and two together and hopefully come up with four

hobbes79

If it helps, Turbo Tax send a conf e-mail if the Feds accepted it or not. I got the acceptance e-mail within 24 hours. You may get a reject notice, but you'll know quickly enough.

You then might just have to print and mail. Takes a little longer to get the refund is all.

mrcarrot

Hi,

I have a quick question if you have a sec, which was touched briefly in the thread already.

To file jointly, does my wife need a SSN? Looking at a turbo tax estimate, it looks like there is a difference of a 10k refund (I assume its a refund if its in brackets!) vs a 2k refund for filing on my own.

I reckon I need to find a CPA - will H+R be able to deal with a tax return where the following has occured?

* I came to the US in july
* Got married in Sept
* Wife hasn't got an SSN / EAD yet
* I sold some shares (to buy a dining table!)
* Some shares vested and the company taxed me in the US twice (once for the UK once for the US due to the fact that the shares were awarded in the UK but vested in the US) - I need to get back one of the 2 tax items
* I might be able to claim for various moving expenses

Many thanks,

Nick