@fjordlander , I applaud your diligence in reading through all the material associated with the subject -- eligibility for "Foreign Earned Income Exclusion". And you are correct in that the tax rules do not explicitly either limit the number of "Test Periods" and therefore begs the question what happens when one ends a foreign tax home in the earlier part of the year and starts a new one during the latter part of the year. This is your particular case.
Code section 911 provides the basis of the pub 54 and all the write-ups by the IRS on this subject --- consistently referring to your freedom to choose the test period that covers the most of your earnings for exclusion. I think the reasoning here is that in case of service breaks as in your case , you can choose a combination of Tax credit and income exclusion to cover all of your foreign earnings. My personal view of this is that this does a dis-service to the those few tax-payers that are in your type of situation ( large break period between foreign assignments/ stays ) and have US income in between --- because in such a case the un-excluded and foreign taxed portion does not match the benefit if the whole foreign amount could be excluded. However I have not found any case-law in this either -- probably has not been litigated.
Does this make sense ?
pk
