This year I'm both US resident for tax purposes as well as my home country resident for tax purposes. I will sell our family home with capital gains about $150k. It's taxable in both countries (tax liability in US is about zero because of foreign tax credit). Tax is not a problem. Filing is complex but I will work with CPA.
Problem is sending money to US. As long as I am tax resident of my home country (and that will be true until July 2018) there are very strict limitations and very burdensome reporting of my foreign (US) accounts I want to legally avoid. I don't want another trip from Europe to USA just to open bank account too.
Is that legal and ok to wire these funds as a gift to my immediate US relatives? That will not be a "fake" gift, I was planning to give these money as gift to them anyway.
Two CPA I talked with advice against "wiring money to account other than your own" as this is red flag or something.
But I personally don't see anything bad, money are 100% legal, every penny is reported and after tax.
You can wire transfer funds from a foreign account to a US account without any issues. The bank has some reporting requirements since the amount is over $10,000 but this does not affect either you or the receiver of the funds from a tax standpoint. You do not report the gift given on a federal tax return. The individual receiving the gift does not report the gift received on a tax return, regardless of the amount received.
However, since you are a US resident taxpayer you will have to report any gifts given to any individual greater than $14,000 on an IRS Form 709, United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return. There will not be any gift taxes owed if your lifetime giving is less than $5.49 million (2017).
TurboTax does not support Form 709
IRS Form 709 - https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f709.pdf
IRS Form 709 instructions - https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i709.pdf