Hi,
I was a J-1 visiting scholar for a few years in the US, having left the US to an European country by the end of April 2019. After the initial 2 years in the US, as I fulfilled the Significant Presence Test (SPT), I was filling my taxes as a resident alien (form 1040). I didn't have any other income besides the one I was receiving from the US institution. Life was (relatively) simple tax wise.
Now for 2019 things seem awfully complicated. Since I left the US by the end of April I still pass the SPT (approx. 100 days). However, I did not return to the country after that moment I started another job in another country right after (May 1st).
From reading around, it seems I could file taxes either as a dual-status alien (sounds complicated and documentation is a bit sparse), or just as a resident alien filing also form 2555. From the documentation, I can define a 1 year period over which I was not in the US for at least 330 days (May 1st 2019 to March 1st 2020), and so I could get foreign tax exclusion.
Is there any advice on what would be the best case? I can find quite a lot of articles about foreign nationals arriving to the US, but very little about the taxes for the ones that leave. I find it suspicious that both options are available to me, and suspect I am misunderstanding something.
As a matter of fact, I already signed up for Turbotax to submit the taxes, and then found out that it is not possible to submit dual-status tax returns through it. However, form 2555 seems to be possible.
Any advice on this situation would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
