5 ms·
Big issues are there are constraints on the time you can spend in the US (too much holiday there and you're not considered living abroad) Check with your accou
by patio11 11y ago
Big issues are there are constraints on the time you can spend in the US (too much holiday there and you're not considered living abroad)
Check with your accountant for an authoritative take on the following, but since I happen to be right with a certainty approaching "Gravity exists" I'll write the correction here: There exist two tests by which you can qualify for the Foreign Earned Income Exemption. One is the physical presence test, which is automatically ruled in your favor (i.e. you are ruled to be a foreign resident) if you spend less than 30 days in a tax year physically in the US. The other is the Bona Fide Residence test, which is less of a deterministic question than physical residence. There's no limit to the amount of time you spend in the US every year as long as you meet the IRS examining officer's impression of someone who "clearly lives in a foreign country continuously for an indefinite period."
I've had years with upwards of 100 days in the US, and never had any problem with claiming Bona Fide Residence in Japan. As my accountant phrased it once: "If you've got only one refrigerator, and it's on, and it isn't in the US, then you're certainly BFR abroad."
For more on this scintillating topic: https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Foreign-Earned-Income-Exclusion---Bona-Fide-Residence-Test https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Fore...
- masklinn 11y agoThanks, I'd checked the IRS website a long time ago but I guess I missed the BFR, or assumed you had to fit both rather than either, I only remembered the physical presence test (which you can easily breach if you work in pretty much any EU country, if you spend all your PTO/vacation time back in the US)