Not sure what you are talking about here. When my dual citizen husband left for the UK in June, he just left.
I am still an alien not a citizen. As such I have to get clearance in the form of a 'Sailing Permit' from the IRS before I leave. Unfortunately I am not having much hopes on my office being capable of this, it's a small town, in 20 years there she has never had to do one of these and has no idea what she is doing (her words).
She has me filling out both forms when it clearly says on the IRS's own website to fill out one or the other. And when I try to point out that I can use the short form one like it says because I have 8 years of tax returns all paid up and showing that we get a refund
every year and thus we are not a risk for not paying our taxes on the current year she just points at the instructions for the long form and says, well it says here you should fill this one out. Well yeah cause those are the instructions for that form, not the permit. *head desk*.
I went to get the stamp yesterday and realised I was missing hubby's as I filled out the return as married filing joint and asked if she would at least look everything over and make sure it's all good before I come back Monday. She glanced at the 1040C form and said we'll we don't do the filing here so I can't really say, as long as it doesn't say you owe anything. Okay says me, well are you happy with all my supporting documents and that I don't need anything else? trying to offer her the stack. She wouldn't look at any of the supporting documents and just reiterated that they didn't actually process it. Okay, well as long as you are happy to stamp that certificate on Monday when I have signatures then I guess we are all good. Yes she said, have a great holiday. I smiled and wished them the same.
If there are any issues at least I can say 'hey, I tried', and just hope I don't get stopped on the way out.
I dread to think what might happen when she gets an eyeball at my green card and see's it is expired. I checked with an immigration attorney, my status is fine and 100% legal as per my letter saying "Congrats you are a permanent resident, welcome to america!" which is what I am giving to her. I just don't have the carrying card to prove it. I wasn't about to fork out $400 or whatever it costs to get the bloody thing renewed when I knew we were leaving permanently anyhow.
Now, though, we are headed back to the US after only a few short months, so I know our taxes are going to be so much *fun* this year. (that was sarcasm btw)
Ha ha, Yes I can quite imagine. I'm already struggling to get my head round the expat laws (cause I count as expatriating as I have been a perm. resident for 9 years *yay*), exit tax laws and other joyous aspects. I still need to figure out what my final month in the UK earning UK money is going to do to our 2011 tax return and whether that makes me a dual status (resident/non-resident) or more likely I think I will still count as resident for the full year due to having been resident for more than 330 days. Would be easier as non-residents can't file jointly.
I was going to ask my helpful local IRS office about the tax implications but after yesterday's visit over what should be a pretty clear cut, fill in this form, stamp here, permit I figured I would be wasting my time.
Thankfully Dad has a good tax accountant who apparently also has a few overseas clients so hopefully it should make sense to him.
