Switch to non calendar year for US taxes?

I'm a US citizen who moved to the UK in September of 2009, and having prepared my US tax return for 2009, it looks like I end up owing a lot of additional taxes. The reason is that I claim the foreign earned income exclusion for my UK earnings in the last 4 months of 2009, but that pushes my US earnings for the first 8 months of 2009 into a higher bracket.

I was looking into the possibility of applying to the IRS to use a fiscal year other than the calendar year for tax purposes - probably ending my tax year on August 31 and starting the new tax year on September 1. This way my foreign earned income exclusion would be part of the following tax year and would not cause my US earnings from the first part of 2009 to be taxed at a higher rate.

Has anyone on this board ever done this before?

The IRS publishes Form 1128 (form here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1128.pdf; instructions here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1128.pdf) to change one's tax year, but doesn't really give too much practical guidance on using it.

I have only seen this done just once in the past twenty-five years and that was probably not lawful.  It is almost impossible for a non-business to keep good enough records.  Have you done the maths without the exclusion and claiming credits instead?  (You couldn't file yet anyway if you were thinking of the FEIE...)

Have you looked at bonus days for PPT?

What's "bonus days for PPT"?

I did look at the possibility of using the foreign tax credit, but that works out even worse in my case than the exclusion, because I didn't pay much UK tax in 2009 since I was only here for part of the UK tax year.

The reason I'm looking into the options now is that even if I use the exclusion and get an extension until later in the year to file, I need to make a tax payment now so I don't get hit with a penalty for not paying on time.