This Thusday (April 14) the Democrats Abroad's Taxation Task Force is hosting a Zoom webinar for expat Americans that will address "the ins and outs of using the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) versus the Foreign Tax Credits (FTC)" when filing one's U.S. taxes.

Saving for one's retirement is never easy; life is expensive, and time flies.

But as a survey of more than 400 U.S. expats, carried out last  October and November by the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) reveals, it's particularly difficult for Americans who are living outside of the U.S., who struggle with a range of issues, including retirement account providers suddenly deciding that they no longer wish to service American expatriate clients.

Oct. 15 is the final, final due date for Americans to file their U.S. tax returns with the IRS in 2021.

With this all-important deadline just hours away, we thought it worth asking, on behalf of those expat Americans who still haven't filed their 1040s, what they can, or should, be doing now...

A little more than a month after Americans around the world have begun receiving “Economic Impact Payments” from the U.S. Treasury – as part of the government’s emergency US$2trn CARES Act stimulus package, unveiled in March – tax experts have begun to point out that some wealthy expatriates could potentially benefit from an apparently unforeseen quirk in the way these payments are being provided, that their Homeland counterparts could not.

At first, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion might seem a potentially useful tool indeed in the tax-paying toolbox of Americans who are resident overseas. After all, notes Toronto-based citizenship lawyer and American expat rights campaigner John Richardson, in his preface to a just-posted set of online podcasts on the FEIE, it "allows you to exclude – Exclude! Exclude! – US$102,000 a year of income from your tax return!"

In fact, though, the FEIE is not anything like the solution to the long-suffering expat taxpayer's problems this statement suggests it might be, he, and four other participants in the three podcasts, go on to agree...

The U.S. has announced it is extending the right to qualify for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) to U.S. citizens and resident aliens who can demonstrate that they have supported the U.S. Armed Forces in designated combat zones, even if their “abode", or tax home, were in the United States rather than abroad.