Please help me switch from the FEIE to FTC method!

Hi everyone,

You all have helped me so many times over the years, and am asking for the knowledge of this lovely group one last time. I've been meaning to switch from the FEIE to FTC method for years as it would allow me to claim child benefit in the US along with other long-term advantages. I have filed an extension to 15 October and thought everything would be fairly straightforward once I had all the calculations prepared, but I'm at a complete loss when it comes to filling out the worksheets. I can't even get past the general worksheet for salary because I'm not sure how to calculate the taxes paid. Do I add up NI paid plus taxes paid on income? Even when I do this it just says I get zero back for FTC and doesn't adjust what I owe at all.

I really want to make this work this year because I'm trying to buy a home at the extra $4000 I would get in child benefit would be a HUGE help for a deposit. That, plus I could then amend my previous returns for additional money back.

Is this something I can figure out before the deadline on Tuesday, or am I just going to have to pack it in and stick with FEIE for now? It doesn't help that I know have the LISA gov top up and the UK child benefit to figure out how to report, so I'm really struggling this year and wishing I'd paid someone to do it for me.

You cannot include NI but your UK income tax alone should exceed your US tax, so it should work for you. You'll need to figure your UK tax on a calendar year basis. It will be more complicated if you have other forms of income than salary.

@Weller , I think I’ve done it right in that respect. I got a statement of earnings for the calendar year and it includes taxable income and total amount paid in tax. So I converted the tax amount to USD using IRS currency converter but it says on Turbotax my income is zero and then there’s no credit to apply (it seems to want me to carry over the credit I’ve calculated to a future year). But I still have $500 to pay according to Turbotax with this method plus it’s using my child tax credit towards reducing taxes rather than receiving the cash back, which is part of the reason I want to switch to the FTC method.

I can’t seem to find anything online that really shows how to do it and this year I’m using the online version of Turbotax which is really rubbish as unlike the desktop version it won’t let me see the actual forms to check what’s going wrong.

Would be amazing if anyone has a solution as I’d love to file this correctly, but given it’s due tomorrow am resigned to the fact I’ll probably have to do the FEIE method and then amend it and switch to FTC after the fact. Just frustrating as everything else is inputted correctly.

I got frustrated with tax software that didn't handle expat situations correctly. I switched to filling in the IRS forms directly. It's possible the version of turbo tax you are using is not able to handle your situation correctly. I am not the person to ask but I believe there are better options out there.

@Weller, it definitely isn't the best software. I like the desktop version better, as I can then at least go into forms mode and fix things. I did manage to get the FTC to work finally, but now Turbotax is throwing up several errors with Form 2555, and I'm still not getting the full child tax credit refunded, though close enough that if I can sort the errors I'm going to call it a day and just amend later on.

Definitely starting earlier next year!