Do I have to enter a date that my foreign taxes were paid on form 1116?

[GeoffreyG · Accepted solution]

Generally speaking, you do need to provide a date on Form 1116, for when the foreign taxes were paid, or accrued.  However, that is basically just to demonstrate that the foreign taxes were paid or accrued during this tax year, or period, rather than anything else.

If you paid foreign taxes for a particular item multiple times during the year (such as on dividend payments received from a foreign stock or mutual fund, for instance), then you can just adopt an "accounting convention" for convenience of data entry.

This will allow you to group such like payments together into a single entry, rather than listing each foreign taxes paid or accrued item with a separate listing and a separate date.  Two common ways of doing this are as follows.  You can enter a date of 12/31/XX (signifying the end of the year); or you can enter a date of 07/01/XX (signifying the midpoint of the year).  Either is an acceptable solution to a normal issue, and will be understood by the IRS for what it is.

Thank you for asking this question.