How to report Indian EPF and Life Insurance on tax return

[tijwin]

I came to the US on a K1 Visa In April 2024 and became permanent resident in Sep 2024. I am filing jointly with my spouse. 2024 is my first year of Tax filing in the US. My spouse is a US citizen. My questions are regarding reporting EPF and life insurance reporting requirements and the forms that I need to fill in.  

Q1. I have got a distribution from employee provident fund (EPF) before I got my green card in September. I paid taxes on it in India. How and which forms do I use to report it? How do I claim the Tax treaty exemption (Article 20?)? 

Q2. I have a few life insurances and paid premiums in 2024 and paid taxes in India. How and which forms do I report those? Do I report only the premium part? Or the current account value or some other number?  

Thank you so much for any help you can provide. We really appreciate it. 

[RobertB4444 · Accepted solution]

You have to declare all of the income you receive worldwide and enter it onto your US tax return.  However, article 20 says that a pension taxable in India is not taxable to the US.  So you may just want to leave it off of the tax return entirely.  

If you decide to include it you would enter it as other miscellaneous income with the description attached and then enter the taxes paid to India as a foreign tax credit in the deductions and credits section.

The life insurance policies that you are paying on aren't reported on your US tax return unless they are paying out as an annuity.  You may have to report them as a foreign account on an FBAR if the value of your interest in them exceeds 10 thousand dollars.

Here are the FBAR rules.

@tijwin 

[tijwin]

Thanks a lot for the quick response.