Hello, I hope I am posting in the correct forum!

My husband is a greencard holder and I am a US citizen and we lived and worked as employees in Texas from January to May 2016. We then moved to Scotland and I continued to work for my US company but as a contract laborer so that I could pay taxes in the UK.

I understand for the US that we will have to file married, filing joint for 2016 with our W2 income, but I am confused as to how I report the taxes I paid in the UK on my 1099 income.

I was told by the HMRC that I cannot file a self assessment tax return and pay those until April 2017 at the earliest so I think I will have to file an extension on my US tax return?

At the same time while I was working as a contractor for the American company I was working part time for a UK company. How do I report those earnings and taxes on my US tax return if the tax year here in the UK is April - April?

I hope all of this makes sense. I've sought professional help but I keep getting quoted $600 + which I absolutely cannot afford and the numbers are pretty simple. In the US we only take the standard deduction and I have small student loan interest.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

There's nothing forcing you to file jointly. What has your husband done about his GC and is he a covered expatriate. Do you plan to file separately to simplify his taxes?

The mismatch of the US and UK tax years is always a problem. You can file extensions or just make reasonable estimates of the income within the different tax years.

You can exclude foreign earned income from your US taxes Using FEIE or you can use the tax you pay in the UK as a credit on your US taxes.

If you worked as a contractor in the UK then you must make sure you don't pay self-employment tax in the US. So for any self employment income you would not file a Schedule SE and simply write in "Exempt US/UK SS Totalization Agreement" on the 1040 line 57.

You'll have to work with the engager of your services to establish if you are considered an employed worker under Scottish law. Simply calling you a contractor cannot deny you any rights that you might have under local law.

Nun thanks very much for the advice. I tried to sign up for TurboTax but it seems that they don't really deal with the issues I'm reporting. Ideally I would like to hire someone for this but I can't seem to get a quote under $400 and I just do not have that kind of money right now. Does anyone here have any recommendations of tax companies that deal with these types of situations?

I'm working on setting up a self assessment account with the HMRC so I can know how much I owe here so that I can report that on my US tax return.

Also, in regards to filing jointly or not jointly, I was always under the impression it was usually better tax wise to file jointly? We did pay in the maximum amount for the time we were working in the US from January - April 2016. He is not planning on doing anything with his green card as we are planning to stay permanently in the UK.

I'm pretty much at a loss of what to do or where to start!

Turbotax has various versions and there is one that deals with self employment.

If your husband plans to stay in the UK then he should do something with his greencard as keeping it puts him in a bit of a limbo wrt taxation. If he still has it and he'll probably be liable to US tax as a resident which might put some limits his UK finances, it will certainly complicate his taxes.

As you paid no UK tax during the 2016 calendar year you have no foreign tax credit to claim on the US income tax return for 2016. If you pay UK (plus possibly Scottish) tax in 2017 you will be able to claim a foreign tax credit on the 2017 US return.