Get your taxes done using TurboTax

Without a tax document like a Form W-2, in TurboTax program, you would enter your foreign income as follows:

In TurboTax online,

• After sign into your account, select Pick up where you left off
• At the right upper corner, in the search box, type in foreign income and Enter 
• Select Jump to foreign income 
• Follow prompts

After you enter the information, if you qualify for a foreign earned income exclusion, the program will prompt you to fill out a Form 2555 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.  To qualify, you have to live outside the United States for at least 330 days during 12 consecutive months.  For more information, please see Foreign income and exclusion and Extension. 

If you have paid taxes to both foreign country and the US tax authorities, the IRS allows you to claim a foreign tax credit on your US tax return.  To claim this foreign tax credit, you would need to file a Form 1116 Foreign Tax Credit. 

Here are the steps: 

• At the right upper corner, in the search box, type in "foreign tax credit" and Enter
• Select Jump to foreign tax credit
• Follow prompts

For example, if you made $35,000 overseas, you can use the exclusion Form 2555 to exclude it.  Or you can use foreign tax credit on the whole amount, whichever benefits you the most.  However, you cannot use both benefits ( double-dip) on the same amount.  

As of today, this form will not be available until February 2/18/2021.  To check forms availability, click here: IRS forms

You would use Form 2555 to calculate the excludable portion of your foreign income that you made and the housing exclusion deduction while working on foreign soil.  For 2020, the maximum exclusion amount has increased to $107,600.  Due to the global health emergency caused by COVID-19, the IRS has provided relief related to the time requirement necessary to meet either the bona fide residence test or physical presence test.  To  learn more, click here: https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i2555

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