pk
Level 15
Level 15

Deductions & credits

@bilsteint  agreeing with @Critter-3  and the suggestions thereof,  especially this is your first time with filing for foreign earned income exclusion while self-employed, i.e. seek professional help.

 

However,  and not knowing the full scenario  ( your immigration status, where is  tax home, when did you arrive at the foreign land,  etc. etc. ) here is the general lay of the  process:

(a) you file a schedule-C  as part of your return   ( tell  TurboTax that you have self-employed income  but do not have a 1099-C .  You have to  input your gross income and allowable expenses using recognized/published  or actual exchange rate  -- TurboTax assumes everything  entered is in US$.   This should result  in net  income and schedule-SE  (  Self-Employment Tax ) which items will be shown on form 1040.

(b) you tell  TurboTax that you have foreign earned income and exclusion -- this will then take you through form 2555 qualifying you for the exclusion and entering the  exclusion amount as a negative number on proper schedule to affect the form 1040.

 

The reason for the suggestion to seek professional help is that you need to watch the froms to make sure  that the amounts are not double entered --- you can also do this in the "forms" mode using the CD/Downloaded version of the software.

 

A small point -- since this thread was from 2019, perhaps  it would have been better to start a new thread