I live overseas (US citizen) and have just inherited money that is in a US pre-tax investment account. My preference is to withdraw it all at once since my retirement savings are in the country I live in, not in the US, but I believe I would have to pay tax on the full amount as if it were income if I do so. Is this correct?
I am considering using part of the money to buy retail business premises with the intention of opening my own shop there. I had a few questions:
1. Would the deposit I pay on the business premises be tax deductible? It sounds like we need to pay a sizable deposit for business premises here (35% - 60% of the purchase cost), so this could be a significant amount of money.
2. We are not able to open the shop yet as the premises are currently leased to a different business for a few more years. Would we still be able to claim expenses for the premises against taxes, either this year or in future years? Are there other steps we would need to take to show that we were setting up the business, or would we need to fully launch the business in the same year we bought the shop for it to count? Ideally we could have some way of counting it against the income this year, as most of my income is overseas and any savings wouldn't make much of a difference against US income in future years.
3. Is this something I can do via TurboTax? I have used TurboTax for many years now to file my self-employment taxes (I am an author who earns royalties in the US) but have never dealt with something like this before.
