LeafPeeper

Hi,

We've been in New Hampshire for a year now. My wife has had a full time job since March 2015 and I have had part time work since Nov 2015. I have been studying and developing a website for a friends business in England which is just about to go live, so there has been no income stream from the UK.

When we moved we brought the proceeds from selling our home in England which was around $240,000 which we used most of to buy a town house in Nashua NH.

Could we file taxes ourselves do you think or should we employ someone to do it for us? If the latter, do people have advice on what type of person to employ? I don't want to overkill and pay more than we have to given our situation seems quite basic.

Would appreciate any advice in this area.

Thanks

NatashaB

Were you in the US for the whole of 2015 or did you move there part way through?

nun

My general answer would be yes. Use something like TaxAct or Turbotax if you don't feel comfortable with filling out the forms yourself.

Were you paid for the studying and website development?...if so how? Do you and your spouse get W2s from your work. Do you own any UK investments like ISAs or US mutual funds and what about pensions?

Did you sell the house before you became a US tax resident.....it sounds like you did.

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LeafPeeper

Thanks for the responses

no

My wife got one from her job, I got one from one of the two part time jobs I have. On that job I pay tax and social but on the other, nothing. I am just considered an independent contractor.

None of the above unfortunately, what we brought is what we have.

Yes, we sold in Nov 2014 and stayed with my sister for a few weeks before flying here in Dec 2014. The money was here a few days before we were. I did read someones experience on BE where they were here, then sold and were subject to capital gains.

In your experience is it straightforward dealing with the tax forms yourself? In both my part time jobs I have to use the car so I would need to be able to claim travel allowance. I did read someone claiming on the cost of moving to the states but I'm guessing as we did that in late 2014 that ship has sailed, in more ways than one!

Are these good? do you have experience of these?

Owen778

I use TaxAct, and I'm happy to recommend it. TurboTax is more popular, but also more expensive, if you need to pay.

Very simple returns are free for all main software companies when you do the return through their websites, but the return requirements that mean you need to pay vary between them. I think Turbotax is the most restrictive in terms of the requirements to be able to file free, but I'm not completely certain of that. You should check before you start.

LeafPeeper

Thanks Owen778, I will look up TaxAct.

Coming from the UK and always having been employed meant we never had to consider the services of an accountant. So i'm wary of overkill in paying someone a lot for something I feel I could do.

nun

On your taxes you'll just enter the income and the tax withheld by your employer given on the W2s. As you also worked as an independent contractor you'll have to file a Schedule C to calculate your net income and the amount of income and payroll taxes you need to pay on that.

OK, that's good. Looks like no capital gains issues then.

Your tax situation seems very simple. You will have to pay a bit more than most people for the software as you need the Schedule C and that's usually in a special edition that is more expensive than the basic package.....FYI I did my taxes with TurboTax "Home and Business" as I am an independent contractor and it cost $79.99, but you still have to add state taxes on to that. TaxAct is a lot cheaper so maybe try that and see how you like it

kins

We've done our taxes with Turbotax for the last 8 years since we moved here. You can pay an extra amount for audit protection which we've always done. I think in our first year we also paid to have the return reviewed by them which was worth it as we had made some mistakes.

mrken30

I think H&R block software may also give you the option to use a person at one of their offices for face to face advice. Someone here may be able to clarify that.

Bob

From the reviews, that's mostly a waste of money as they don't do anything about it except give you a refund if you're lucky. Small print seems to always back them up about user error.

penguinsix

Yes, you can do it yourself. In fact you probably should do it yourself as you'll be doing it from now until whenever.

However, if this is your first year, you might benefit from a little help.

My advice would be to prepare it using TurboTax or HR Block or whatever, and then take the finished forms for a "review" from a professional accountant. This will cost significantly less than showing up there and dumping a shoe box of receipts on them, but will give you some professional advice on things you might have missed.

For example, the transferring of money to the US might be a situation where you were physically here in the USA but still had the money in a UK bank account such that a FATCA filing would be in order, or at the very least an FBAR (not sure how you did it). Did you own any part of a company in the UK while you were technically resident in the USA (even for only one day). There are a few forms to file if that is the case too.

These are the kind of things you'll want a professional review on, and preferably from someone more experience in US-UK tax matters than your local neighborhood tax prep service.

cautiousjon

I used TaxAct and it was pretty simple to file my Federal and CA tax returns. The website works well and has good guides and FAQs for the tax layman.

I used TaxAct for last year's returns too, but they were more complicated because I *just* qualified for 1040NR, so had to enter a lot more information and had to file paper returns. CA paid me my refund straight away (yay!) but the IRS recently wrote to me saying that they need another six months to adjudicate on my federal return. It's funny that they can just decide to take six months longer to give me back my refund but won't let me arbitrarily decide to take an extra six months to pay them if I owed them money.

This year's returns were pretty simple. As I used form 1040, I was able to e-file, so I hope that I'll get the Federal refund back pretty quickly this time. I'm not holding my breath though.

I didn't pay for the tax auditing service/protection, but I did opt for the data archival service, just in case I lose my paper returns and need to reference a previous year's returns.

Hanco

Has anyone used tax software to do their return when they had:

1) Income in the UK for part of the tax year (property rental income)
2) Salary paid in £GBP for part of the year
3) Earned $USD for the remainder of the year

I'm inclined to think booking an appointment with someone is the right way forward, but I can fill forms in pretty well myself if there is a guiding system...

Worth a shot, just in case one of you has been in this scenario

Hanco

cautiousjon

Hanco, I have not, but if I was you, I'd want to consult with a specialist British and American tax advisor. You could fill in all the forms yourself, but I imagine that it'll potentially be much more complicated than a usual tax return, as you'll need to report UK income to the IRS but apply for foreign tax credits so you don't get taxed twice, etc. You might also want/need to file a UK self-assessment tax return if you haven't already (the deadline has since passed, so you'll get fined if you have to file late).

I have heard good things on here about BritishExpatsTax.Com. They're based in New York but they can apparently do everything online so it doesn't matter where you live in the US.

Hanco

Thanks for that. I'll be ok for UK tax (no fine expected) as I was PAYE and my tax code was already adjusted for the rental income.

Will look into that New York recommendation. Any other recommendations from forum members for UK/US advisors are welcome, especially if they are in there Atlanta GA area.

Thanks all