Foreign earned income physical presence test

[mollyemcclure]

I was abroad for 365 days. I have typed the dates, and it tells me the dates do not add to 330 days. What have I done wrong? 08/14/2015 to 08/22/2016

[GeoffreyG · Accepted solution]

The answer to your question is that this particular interview screen is rather "touchy" in that you must enter an exact date interval that adds up to 365 days (which is one calendar year), in order to properly fill out the IRS Form 2555 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

Your 330 days spent abroad to meet the IRS's Physical Presence Test must furthermore be within the 365 day range that you input into the data field; but the interval itself must span exactly 365 days (not 330 days).

Stated differently, if you spent 330 days overseas, beginning on 08/14/15, you will want to enter 08/13/16 as your "ending" date in the TurboTax interview.  Please see the screen capture image directly below this text for an example; simply click the image to open.

That should allow you to continue with the rest of the Form 2555 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion interview, and move beyond this issue.

Thank you for asking about this.

[smithdnm]

Thank you, GeoffreyG.  I had exactly the same issue and your solution worked perfectly.

[xyoojpc]

@GeoffreyG  I am also having problems inputting the qualifying 12 month period. My start date is 07/29/2018, so I put 07/30/2019 as my end date. However, when I click 'continue', TurboTax keeps telling me to put in a valid end date because it's not 12 months after the start date. I tried inputting '07/29/2019', '07/31/2019', and other dates but keep getting the same error. What am I doing wrong?

[kingjlam]

i have entered 4/28/16 as my beginning date and 4/27/17 as my ending date but i am getting an error that i have not entered a 12 month period