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Where’s my refund? How do I calculate foreign tax credits?
In this post, we´re going to discuss how to find out the status of your 2020 tax refund and review Part 2 of foreign tax credit calculations. Last Friday, May 17 was Tax Day, and you either filed your tax return, or you filed a request for an extension of time to file...
Oh no, my SSN was already used by someone else on a tax return! What should I do?
"My SSN has already been used on a tax return and I can’t e-file. What should I do?" Today we are going to discuss what to do if you are so unlucky as to be faced with this problem. You prepare your tax return. You clear all the e-filing reviews, click on the FILE NOW...
Making sense of foreign tax credit baskets without becoming a basket case
In the last post, we start talking about Foreign Tax Credits. In this post, we will talk about how they need to be broken down into their different basket categories before they can be applied against US income tax to avoid double taxation. Foreign Tax Credits (FTCs)...
New Expanded Child Tax Credit and Speaking of credits: Foreign Tax Credit!
This week we´re going to talk about Child Tax Credit and Foreign Tax Credit. One of the most difficult topics of financial literacy is understanding tax matters. Let’s try to grow our knowledge about taxes in this post by learning about two important subjects: The...
ARPA and Foreign Earned Income Exclusion 2020 Tax Return Considerations
In this post, we´re going to talk about ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act, which recently became law, and FEIE (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion). Have you received your third individual payment, EIP3, yet? If you haven’t, possible reasons include: You have not filed...
HELP! I will receive the third stimulus check EIP abroad. How do I cash it?
Close to a year ago, when the first coronavirus stimulus law was passed, the CARES Act, we received lots of messages from Americans living abroad with a big problem: they didn’t know how to cash their IRS check abroad. Fast forward to this week, and the IRS is getting...
American Rescue Plan Act – What’s in it for you? Plus Expat Tax Myths
A few weeks ago I shared with you a two-part piece featuring 20 tax myths that was written by Kelly Erb Smith, a tax journalist at Bloomberg Tax. American Rescue Plan Act. I enjoyed her piece so much that I reached out to Kelly to suggest that she write one about US...
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and the Pandemic
As promised, this week we are going to discuss the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, or FEIE for short. Since I expect many of you to already be familiar with the FEIE, and for those of you living in the USA it is not currently relevant, we are going to do this via...
Top 20 US Tax Myths and Why They Are Wrong
Today I came across an excellent post by a tax attorney who writes for Bloomberg Tax, and I just had to share it with you. It was written by Tax Lady and attorney Kelly Phillips Erb of Bloomberg Tax. Kelly writes about the most common tax myths in the US tax world,...
Financial Fitness for 2021 – Your Questions Answered
As promised last week and on January 28th to the attendees of the Financial Fitness for the New Year Webinar, we are going to provide written answers to the questions we were unable to cover in enough detail after the event. We will answer 10 of those questions in...

Marina Hernández
The Crossborder Planner
After spending the first 24 years of my life quietly living in the same little neighborhood in my native Argentina, I came to the USA for just 4 months to study finance. Well, that was the plan. In very predictable fashion, the unpredictable happened…