Paying US Taxes as an Expat Abroad – What You Need To Know

Sneak Peek:

Kristin:    00:00:00    It makes things a lot easier. It was so surreal to see Costa Rica announce their remote work visa. I was like, I've been jumping through hoops for so many years, over a decade and now they're just like, yeah, sure. Stay. Stay as long as you <laugh>. Okay,  

Carrie:    00:00:17    Seriously, now you do this?

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin Wilson, Host:     00:00:23    Hi everyone. Kristin from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 118 of Badass Digital Nomads. This is part two of my interview with David and Carrie McKeegan, the founders of Greenback Tax Services for expats. David and Carrie have been location independent since 2009. They've had three kids on three different continents and they run two fully remote businesses with teams of over 50 people distributed all over the world. In last week's episode, part one of our conversation, we talked about what it was like getting married and growing their family while living as expats abroad, their tips for traveling with kids, favorite places to travel, favorite places to live, and uh, what they've learned over this long term of living abroad.  

Kristin:    00:01:31    And now in part two, we're delving into the tangible nitty-gritty details of what you need to know as a US expat abroad about paying us taxes. There are so many questions around this topic, so many misconceptions. And even after having lived or traveled abroad for 20 years and coming up with a long list of questions for them, I still learned a lot. So there's always more to learn about this topic. It's really important that everyone is informed about it. So in this episode, I try to give you that info via David and Carrie, but hopefully in a more entertaining way than just Googling it and reading a bunch of stuff on the internet. We're talking about misconceptions around if Americans can pay zero taxes or which people of which nationalities can actually reduce their tax burden to zero. We are talking about digital nomad arbitrage and how to save money, what kinds of tax write-offs you should be looking for, and also how to avoid double taxation.  

Kristin:    00:02:47    We're talking about the most important forms that you need to know about and what they typically see in their clients as to what people aren't aware of. We also go over deadlines, uh, pros and cons to setting up offshore companies or basing yourself in different countries, all sorts of things. So get your pen and paper out, take some notes, pause, listen back to this if you need to. And also, as usual, remember to check the show notes for links to every resource that we mention in all episodes, but especially in this one, it's really important if there's anything specific that you wanna look up or go back to refer to. And then of course you can always reach out to Greenback Tax if you are looking for an accountant. This is not a sponsored podcast, but uh, they are one of the few companies that I have found globally.  

Kristin:    00:03:44    I would say they're in my top three to five companies of providers for tax services for expats. So definitely good people. So I hope you all get a lot of value out of this episode. And before we get started, a big thank you to our fellow listener and my patron, Henry Martinez who bought me three coffees last week. Really appreciate it Henry. Thank you so much. And if you'd like to chip in and literally fuel the production of this podcast, you can head over to badassdigitalnomads.com/support where you can buy me a coffee, donate some crypto, send some PayPal, or join my Patreon club and get access to monthly Zoom hangouts and preview all of my videos before they're live on YouTube. You can also get discounts on merch courses and consulting. Head over and check that out. And I hope you enjoy part two of my interview with David and Carrie McKeegan from Greenback Tax Services.

Podcast Interview:

Kristin: Okay, well let's talk a bit about expat taxes because this is such a loaded topic. Let's start with, I guess the most obvious question the US citizens. Do they have to file tax returns regardless of how long they've been in the US or even if they were born abroad but are US citizens and have never been to the US?  

David:    00:05:16    Yeah, so there's three countries in the world that tax their citizens regardless of where they live. Uh, it's Eritrea, which is little country in Africa, North Korea and the United States. So we're in good company with our tax policies there, <laugh>. Uh, but yeah, basically if you're a US citizen, uh, it doesn't matter how it happened, but if you're a US citizen, you have to pay taxes to the US each year. If you have earned income. If you have no income then you don't have to file or pay.  

Kristin:    00:05:46    Oh, you don't have to file at all if you have no income or do you just file with no income?  

David:    00:05:51    No, you don't have to file if you have no income.  

Kristin:    00:05:54    Okay. And what about people that, so I know people who have moved abroad as expats and then just never filed and they've gotten second passports in other places and they're just not really worried about it. But what are the consequences of for not filing tax returns? Because I saw that you had an article on your website. It said that the IRS was sending letters to indebted taxpayers saying that it will ask the US State Department to revoke their passports. Can you talk a bit about that?  

David:    00:06:32    Sure. So when FATCA came into place, that's the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Basically what that did was it said to every other country in the world, we want you as the country or your banks to report to us on US citizens in your country. So if a US citizen has a bank account in your country, you government or bank are now responsible for telling us, uh, the treasury department about that bank account. There's been a whole lot of hoopla around all this, but imagine the 1099 system in the US where you know, if you have a bank account and you earn interest, uh, a copy of your 1099 goes directly to the IRS and a copy of your 1099 goes to you. That's now happening basically on a global basis because of this law by the us. So everybody who's overseas who has a bank account potentially will be reported to the government, the US government.  

David:    00:07:38    So the government knows you're out there. Now if you have high income and a lot of money coming in and out of the account, they're likely to go after you first. If you have, you know, very little money or no money going in and out of an account for the time being there probably wouldn't hassle you. The passport revocation it can impact expats, but I think thus far it's mainly been used on people who are us base to owe large amounts of money to the government. Those people can have, you know, much like if you get arrested for a crime, they can take your passport till you're cleared of the crime. So you can't flee the country. That's probably the idea behind why they put that law in place. It's gotten a lot of press about, you know, now they're coming after expats, they're gonna take your passport.  

David:    00:08:31    In the beginning there was a little bit of confusion as to whether penalties from not filing foreign bank account reports, you know, the slang word is the FBAR. Uh, the form is the FinCEN 114. If you don't file that, you can be charged $10,000 a year. It's actually gone up a bit. I think it's around 12,400 or so. Now. Those penalties would not apply to the passport revocation. So when the law first came out, people were very nervous 'cause they're saying, yeah, I have a joint account with my spouse. My spouse is not a US citizen, I haven't been reporting the FBAR, they now gonna take away my passport. 'cause what can happen is if they revoke your passport and your visa is in your passport, all of a sudden you don't have a visa anymore either. People were starting to panic, but I believe they've come out now and said FBAR is not gonna impact, you know, the threshold for taxes owed that can lead to passport revocation.  

Kristin:    00:09:31    Okay, so is that why in the FBAR form it asks for the highest account balances in those accounts because they wanna see basically who's making the most money and make sure that they're filing correctly? 

David:    00:09:45    Yeah, They, they're basically trying to make sure that people aren't mo moving money offshore to hide it. In my opinion, these are not set up purposefully to trip up expats. These are set up to stop people who are US based from hiding money, hiding assets overseas. 

Kristin:    00:10:04    Hmm,  Okay. But  

David:    00:10:05    Expats are kind of caught in the crossfire because you know, we are the ones that are overseas that open up bank accounts. We are the ones that then have to learn all this paperwork and fill out all these forms every year just to stay compliant with the US so we don't get in trouble.  

Carrie:    00:10:20    And it also almost ends up making you like bank, you know, banks give you a hard time having a bank outside of the US because they see it as like sort of this guilty thing when like if you live outside the US of course you're gonna have a bank account there. I mean what else would you do? You know, but so it ends up just being a little bit, you kow,  

Kristin:    00:10:37    Right. Like just--   

Carrie:    00:10:39    You get, you get stuck in that <laugh>,   

Kristin:    00:10:41   Just the term offshore bank account connotes some sort of shady stuff when it's just really, if you are living in another country and you open a bank account there and I've always felt like banks looked at me like a criminal once they find out I have a US passport. Like why, you know, why do you wanna open an account with us and you get grilled? And I'm like, I just wanna be able to pay my internet online <laugh>.  

Carrie:    00:11:06    Right.  

David:    00:11:07    But you know, I, I opened up a BCR account in Costa Rica 'cause you needed to pay your electric bill, the water bill and the internet bill. Right. And uh, I went in and had to bring my passport and you know, they asked me for all this stuff, can you gimme a letter of reference from your bank in the US and you know, all these hoops they wanted me to jump through. Then in the end I get the account open and the guy says, you have an account maximum of $1,500. I was like, what? It's like, yeah, you can't put more than $1,500 in or take more than $1,500 out so you can use it to pay, you know, your local utility bills and stuff like that. But you know, that's it. And that was because of these US regulations. They don't want Americans that are tipping them over the threshold so they have to start reporting.  

Kristin:    00:11:51    Yeah. So in Costa Rica the bank policies have changed so much. They're changing constantly and you can go to the same bank, different branches throughout the country, different days and get different answers. And if you go back to the same bank multiple times, eventually you could open an account because it just depends on who's working there that day and if they let you open an account. But I've done that a lot with my relocation clients as we've done a lot of research and bringing people from bank to bank and always checking on the requirements and BCR for a little while you could actually open an account with up to $1,000 per month movements online with a passport and then they took that away again within a year. So they always are changing their rules. But then there's this form that you can get, which is called a declaration of income from a Costa Rican CPA, that they look at your annual income and your statements and then you can verify that you earn more money and basically it's proof of income so that the bank will let you deposit and withdraw higher amounts.  

Kristin:    00:13:00    But that still gets a bit dodgy because once you hit that $10,000 threshold, then there could be more paperwork that's probably also related to maybe FinCEN. I don't know for sure. But I think it's related to anti-money laundering sort of laws in those countries or even around the world. And so it can just be annoying. And even with, with companies too, like the bank can ask at any time, if you have a corporation in Costa Rica, they can just ask for your operating statements and balance sheets and income statements and everything to make sure that you have proof of where those funds are from. So yeah, it's a big headache. I just use TransferWise now, well Wise I guess it's called now because I used to go through that in every country, but now it's not as needed unless you live there long term. But do you have residency in Costa Rica?  

David:    00:13:54    We don't yet. We've been going back and forth on whether we want to do the whole process and our ideal would be to be in Costa Rica for about six months every year, be in the US for one to two months every year and then be traveling the other, you know, four to five months every year. We had a great plan for 2000, uh, where we were gonna go, what we're gonna do, like the adventures, like all this kinda stuff. Obviously that one pear shaped, we're gonna try and get that back on track this year going into next year, you know, see if we like that split, you know, so being grounded for about six months in Costa Rica, uh, trying to cover as much of the kids' school as we can while we're doing that. And then taking the aspects of school that we can on the road for a couple months. So for example, next year our oldest guy is gonna be studying ancient Greece as part of his curriculum. You know, we're peeking through the curriculum saying okay, you know, these are the places we're gonna go to when we're in Greece and you'll have a step up, like you'll know what these places are. Like you'll have, you know, had boots on the ground to see, oh I've been to the Acropolis, I've been here. I've seen that. Turn it into more of a world schooling kind of setup for the kids.  

Kristin:    00:15:14    Yes. And I don't think that you would necessarily need to get residency in Costa Rica. So for people who are listening, if you get a form of residency in Costa Rica, you can get what's called a DIMEX, which is their ID card for foreigners. And with that DIMEX it makes it a lot easier to open a local bank account because you have a local ID number, but a lot of people live as perpetual tourists in Costa Rica because you can go in and out every 90 days that has been extended during C-O-V-I-D but also it's not out yet, but they will have the new remote work visa or digital nomad visa this year. So I'm sure you could apply for that. I think the barrier is going to be really low and so that's just going to make perpetual tourism even easier. So I don't think that there will be many benefits to getting permanent residency status in Costa Rica aside from the bank account, which, you know, there's other ways now with all of our online banking options.  

Kristin:    00:16:15    Yeah, I think that you could just do the six months there and you know, go on those passport runs if you need to. And you can even file for extensions sometimes if you need to as well. I think it's like a hundred dollars for one month, but if you, depending on the residency scheme that you get, when I, I calculated it when I was getting, looking into getting residency and it was actually more expensive by far for me to get residency plus paying monthly social security and medical care. I could just buy a flight to Panama or something or Honduras or wherever or the US and go on a trip Columbia and Peru, Mexico and have fun and then come back instead of paying into that system. So--  

David:    00:17:00    Well it's a great excuse to get up and travel. Yeah, right. It's like oh every 90 days I have to go somewhere. Like you start making your list of all the places you wanna see.  

Kristin:    00:17:08    Yeah, exactly. So I think you're in a good spot and especially with the remote work and digital nomad visas, it's gonna make it a lot easier to stay there longer and save money. So less obligatory vacations, <laugh>  

David:    00:17:21    <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:17:22    So these topics, do you think that we will ever see in the US a a residency based tax structure? There's a lot of lobbying going on to the US government from what I've seen from different accounting firms and maybe organizations, I don't know who, who they all are. Do you think that that will ever actually happen? That there will be an option for US citizens living abroad to change their tax domicile? Is there any interest whatsoever in the US government or the IRS for allowing that?  

David:    00:18:00    I personally can't see that ever happening. And the reason is that the way voting works is when you're an expat, your vote goes into whatever state you used to live in. And so even though you know there's an estimate of between, you know, three and 9 million Americans living overseas, which you know would make a pretty hefty sized state if we were all able to vote as a block, you know, we'd get proper representation in the government if that were able to happen. Uh, but that's not how it happens. It filters through the state and so it gets really watered down as our votes get counted. Now that said, you know, the election in uh, 2020 was one where all those mail ballots really counted. You know, I'm 46 right now and that's the first time I've seen mail-in ballots actually count towards who they're saying is the uh, winner of the election usually  

Kristin:    00:18:56    Except in 2000. And I think they did it too in Florida.  

David:    00:18:59    Well, Yeah, in well in one state, right? Not everywhere. Just in one state <laugh>. So you know, I guess you could say that if mail-in ballots become a much bigger part of the process, then you might be able to get enough expats who are saying that one or two states are, uh, where they're able to vote from, uh, that they could start tipping a state or two and then they might get more fair representation. But I actually think things are gonna go the other way globally because if you look at what's happening globally, with the exception of India and Africa, populations in most countries are shrinking and the populations are also getting older. So people are having fewer children while the population is aging. So you're gonna have like, it's almost like an upside down pyramid is what the population is gonna look like with the old up at the top and the new and the young down at the bottom that's gonna put pressure on a lot of countries' finances. And so they're gonna be looking for ways to raise tax revenue anywhere they can. And that might be citizens living overseas that might be digital nomads coming into work for a couple months at a time. But you know, I think at some point we're gonna see a system where people are, even if they're in a country on a tourist visa, if they're working or if they're earning money while they're there doing that, they start getting taxed for that in that local country.  

Kristin:    00:20:30    I agree. I think that we are in the vast minority when it comes to this way of thinking. I wrote about this in 2019 on medium that the more people there are working abroad, the more incentive there is for governments to work together to collect tax revenue from people that are living in gray areas or that are basically living tax free. And so I kind of see this attempt to lobby the US government to change to a residency based taxation as kind of being a waste of time because we're such a small part of the population and it's just taking money out of their pockets basically. And we don't have, what I talked about with your study, which I did a podcast episode on, is that we have such little political influence because so many US citizens overseas don't vote, the Republicans aren't represented by the DNC and then most of our absentee ballots aren't usually counted anyway.  

Kristin:    00:21:29    So it's like I just don't see how they would ever listen to us. Like I worked in the poker industry for 10 years and people were always lobbying to get online poker legalized and that still hasn't even happened on a countrywide basis because it's just not a priority for the US government. And I can't see a scenario where all of a sudden a priority of the US government will be allowing expats to pay less taxes or no taxes. But that's just my opinion. But then do you have clients I saw from your website from Canada and the UK, do you also help people from other countries?  

David:    00:22:07    We've got clients, I think we now have clients in every country around the world, with the exception of North Korea and Iran and Cuba, like the places you're not allowed to be is an American  

Kristin:    00:22:21    And a lot of those clients can actually legally pay zero tax if they're living abroad, Right? During depending on their situation. 

David:    00:22:31   Yeah. Like you know, you can, depending on your situation. Like if you're living and working in the UK the way we used to, we weren't paying any US tax because we were paying into HMRC or Majesty's Revenue and Custom. So HMRC took a bigger bite of the Apple than the US did. So we still had to file in the US and just say, Hey, we paid the Queen. So you know, uncle Sam's not getting a slice this year. What you see more over what people can do in the digital nomad sphere is use the foreign earned income exclusion and that allows you to exclude about $108,000 of earned income each year from US taxation. You know, if you work for a US company that's a hundred percent remote and you're allowed to travel wherever you want, you can spend a year traveling around the world, you're still working and earning income in the us, you're still paying into social security. But you can use the foreign earned income exclusion to exclude $108,000 from US taxation. You would have to meet either the bonafide resident test, meaning you're a full-time resident somewhere else. You have no intention of returning to the United States, uh, as a resident. And the physical presence test says that you are living inside a foreign country for 330 days in a 365 day period. So if you go outside the US and live abroad for 330 days, then you can use the foreign earned income exclusion.  

Kristin:    00:24:08    Mm-Hmm <affirmative> without being in the air or the ocean during those days. Technically <laugh>  

David:    00:24:14    <laugh>, you have to be in a country for a full 24 hours. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:24:18    So that was really good info. I'm gonna break that apart a little bit so that people can absorb it point by point. A big conception I've seen with the foreign earned income exclusion that you mentioned is that people think that they can just pay no taxes on that 108,000. But as you mentioned, there's a distinction where you're still paying social security, which could also be self-employment tax if you're self-employed.  

David:    00:24:43    Yeah, so self-employment tax, anybody who earns over $400 a year, uh, is required by law to file a tax return. Uh, and that's to capture the self-employment tax. So if you're self-employed, you know you're digital nomad, you have your own company, you're earning a hundred thousand dollars a year, uh, you still have to pay that 15.3% in tax. Uh, and that comes out before you apply the foreign earned income exclusion.  

Kristin:    00:25:09    Okay. And then for people that are making, let's say you're making seven figures instead of six figures, are most of your clients just paying standard income taxes on that other income? Or are people doing all sorts of creative schemes, I guess <laugh>, what is the word I'm looking for? Creative tax strategies where they're trying to reduce their taxable income. I'm thinking of, you know, people like Mitt Romney comes to mind with like their offshore companies and accounts and pass through entities and things like that.  

David:    00:25:45    Well this might blow your mind a little bit, but the US is one of the biggest tax havens in the world.  

Kristin:    00:25:51    I've heard that.  

David:    00:25:53    We've got a really low corporate tax rate right now. You can have uh, you know, all these pass through entities and all this kinda stuff. We generally don't attract or try to attract clients who are going to go down some of the more aggressive paths. We wanna make sure that your taxes are right and that they will stand up to audit. But we're not trying to take super aggressive positions that are going to lead to an audit. Yeah. If we see something that doesn't look right, we'll tell the client, Hey, you know, that's not something we're comfortable filing. And you know, we've done that. Like we've done that this year. We had a client who was pushing to do something, we're like, you know, if you can find an accountant that's willing to do that for you, great. But you know, we're gonna take a pass on that.  

Kristin:    00:26:40    That's great. I mean it goes back to what you said about how FATCA adversely affected expats because as you mentioned, I think it was created to discourage high net worth individuals in the United States from hiding assets offshore. But then it ended up affecting normal, um, US citizens that were living abroad <laugh> who just wanted to have their day-to-day lives in other countries, uh, not necessarily billionaires that had bank accounts in Switzerland. And so that misconception kind of filters down even with tax reporting. It's like just being able to find somebody that can help you report taxes completely and accurately with all the correct forms and documents from abroad is a challenge in and of itself. And then it does seem that these aggressive strategies are mostly being held by like US corporations or like really high net worth like politicians, you know, the Mitt Romneys and people like that of the world or the Apple Corp and things like that. So it's good to make that distinction that we're just a lot of expats in digital nomads we're just normal people trying to go <laugh> go about our lives abroad and making sure that we're checking the boxes on all of these requirements. And then--

David:    00:27:58    Yeah, there's a lot of regular individual can do. So you know, if you're a self-employed and you're a digital nomad for argument's sake, say you earn $200,000 or $250,000 a year, you know, you can do some of the regular stuff that people do. Like set up a 401K plan, you get a company match, you get to deduct, you know, the 1095 that you put into your 401K plan. You know, if you're married, uh, your spouse can hire you or you can hire your spouse and you know, then you get two foreign earned income exclusions. So then it goes from 1008 to 2016.   

Kristin:    00:28:31    Yeah. Then you have your--

David:    00:28:32    and you get 2401Ks  

Kristin:    00:28:33    SEP IRA your Roth IRA as well.  

David:    00:28:36    Yeah, the uh, I actually, I like the FIRE community because they talk about, yeah, nobody likes talking about money, but the FIRE community talks about money and yeah, it is some of the things they're talking about work for expats as well.  

Kristin:    00:28:51    And then there's other write-offs too, like the housing credits or housing deductions. What are some of the main deductions that people listening should know about?  

David:    00:29:03    You know, the biggest one's gonna be the foreign earned income exclusion. Uh, there's also a far-- foreign housing there deduction that you can take based on where you are. That number can go up or down. Yeah, some places like London, uh, I think it can be about $75,000 per year. That's a deduction you get for foreign housing costs that you're spending. So it can't be for a property you own, it has to be something you're renting. That can be another pretty good one for, you have to be a little bit careful investing overseas if you're an expat. Just because it looks like a mutual fund overseas doesn't mean it is the US government likes to call those, uh, foreign trusts. Hmm. Where they get taxed as pfi, passive foreign investment corporations. So you, you have to be careful with money as an expend.  

Kristin:    00:29:52    Okay. And then you made a good distinction as well talking about paying into her Royal Majesties <laugh> of tax fund. There's a lot of confusion over double taxation. So can you kind of explain why people should not be double taxed? Not that they should or shouldn't, but that the system is set up so that people are not double taxed  

David:    00:30:14    It. It is largely set up so that you're not double taxed. There are areas where things aren't clear. So sometimes people do get hit with a double tax basically as an expat or as a US person. There's two ways you can reduce or eliminate your US tax burden, the foreign earned income exclusion, which we've talked about, and then the foreign tax credit. So if you're paying taxes to a foreign government, you can take a dollar for dollar credit against your US taxes for that. So if you live in England and you pay, you earn a hundred thousand dollars, you pay $35,000 to HMRC, you get a $35,000 tax credit on your US taxes. If you paid more in foreign taxes than you did in US taxes, you can build up those credits and roll them forward for a period of 10 years. And so then if you stay in the uk, you start drawing down a pension in the UK, uh, you can use those tax credits to offset any tax you would owe on that pension.  

Kristin:    00:31:16    Okay. I didn't know you could roll that forward. I guess I don't pay as much in in the other countries. Can you give some information on when people should know if they will be treated as a tax resident in that country? And I know that it depends on their status if they're a tourist or now with these digital nomad visas, some of them have tax stipulations in, but just as a general rule, like how many days if you're in Thailand or the Philippines or France before you need to start paying taxes there.  

David:    00:31:50    A lot of countries say that if you're in their country for 183 days, then you become a tax a resident for tax purposes.  

Kristin:    00:31:59    Okay. Important to know. And then also related to what you said earlier, the people ask a lot about state income taxes. So this is a whole nother thing. I'm from Florida luckily, so I don't have state income taxes. But what do your clients do? Let's say that they're qualifying for the foreign earn income exclusion, but they're still paying state and income taxes in the us. Are there any ways for them to easily change their state tax domicile? Because I know that some states make it more difficult than others and in some cases people have said that they moved from California to another state and lived there for a couple years before going abroad just so that they could change their state tax. Can you elaborate on that a bit? 

David:    00:32:49    Yeah,  You know, state taxes are different in, I think it's 46 states all have an income tax. So it's different in each of the states that has an income tax. The one thing I would tell people is if you're thinking about going abroad then, and you're from a state that's known to be a sticky state, meaning you know that they want their sliced regardless of where you are, consider moving somewhere else for, it doesn't have to be years, but at least a couple months, uh, before you go and, you know, switch over your driver's license, your library card, like all that kind of stuff so that you become a resident of that new state before you go overseas. And you know, the best states for that are gonna be Florida, Texas. So South Dakota has an interesting program because they really want to get all of the RV business in the United States.  

David:    00:33:43    If you want to become a resident of South Dakota, uh, you can show up in South Dakota, sleep in a hotel, bring that receipt in and say, okay, I'm now a resident of South Dakota and switch over your driver's license, switch over your voter registration, all this kinda stuff. And you only have to spend one day a year in South Dakota in order to, uh, maintain your residency in that state. Yeah.

Kristin:  Wow.

David:  So yeah, if you're looking for a way to change your residency quickly, uh, I would look up South Dakota and what they're doing there. Certainly if you're from California, New York, Virginia, uh, any of these like really sticky states, I would seriously consider doing something like that before you go overseas.  

Kristin:    00:34:25    Okay. I did not, I did not know that about South Dakota. Are there any countries that are quote unquote good places for US expats or digital nomads to live as far as low or zero local taxes?  

David:    00:34:43    You know, you really have to look at each country on a country by country basis. Yeah, I, I can say that Costa Rica, their policy is that income earned outside of Costa Rica is not taxable in Costa Rica. So if you have a, if you're a digital nomad, you have a US-based business or something like that, you can go to Costa Rica and live there and not pay Costa Rican income tax. You're only paying the US side of that at that point.  

Kristin:    00:35:11    Right. If you're generating offshore income. That's a good distinction. And then there's people that comment sometimes on my video saying there's such and such way for Americans to pay zero taxes, but I'm not aware of any way that Americans could pay zero income taxes living abroad unless they just weren't generating any income at all. Are there any sort of, you know, straightforward, I don't even wanna say straightforward. Like are there any rules or laws or situations where US citizens living abroad can legally pay zero taxes?  

David:    00:35:46    The only place I know of in the entire galaxy, uh, where US citizen can pay zero tax is Puerto Rico. Mm. And I, I think it's called Act 23 and Act 27 or it, it's something like that. But one of 'em says that you don't have to pay any capital gains taxes and one of 'em says that if you have a Puerto Rican based business, you don't have to pay any US tax on the income you earn from that business.  

Kristin:    00:36:15    And there's a physical presence test there too, right?  

David:    00:36:20    Yeah. I don't, I don't know all the details of it, but I think you have to be in Puerto Rico for at least six months a year or something like that to maintain that status.  

Kristin:    00:36:32    Yeah.  That's why I didn't do that because I don't like anything that requires me to be in the place for a certain number of days. <laugh> too much commitment <laugh>, um, I have qualified quite a few times for the foreigner income exclusion, but also let's talk about a couple ways that people can do that without the physical presence test the 330 days. So can you expand a little bit on an example of what it would look like if someone were to show that their permanently or for the foreseeable future living in another country, what kinds of things would they need to show? 

David:    00:37:12    So for the bonafide residence test, first you have to live outside the United States for one full calendar year before you can even apply. So, you know, any first year expat, this isn't gonna apply to them. You have to be outside for a full calendar year first, but then the IRS would look at your actions, uh, not at how many days you're in the country. So a good example would be when we first moved to London, you know, we had local jobs, we had a local flat that we were renting, we set up local bank accounts, you know, we had electric bills and cell phone bills and uh, we're paying into the local tax system. Yeah. We were full on a hundred percent living in the UK at that point. And that's what a bonafide resident is. Somebody who is legitimately living somewhere else. It is not, yeah, it is not really a digital nomad thing. It's like you're a resident in this particular place.  

Kristin:    00:38:12    Right. So you could've qualified for that in Bali, for example, living there for eight years, right? Yeah, same with me in Costa Rica. At first I used that method, but then when I went nomadic, the only way was basically the 330 days in other countries. So yeah, just wanted to clarify that for people. I know we're getting really technical for the listeners, but these are all such technical questions that people ask and we haven't done a tax episode in two years, so I'm glad that you're here answering these questions. <laugh>, here's something that I just learned about this year. Why should people know about the form W8-BEN? Uh  

David:    00:38:51    Oh Just, you know, you mean because you have to report your social security number and everything like that when you're doing.

Kristin:    00:38:57    Or this is my understanding that for let's say if I hire, um, an international contractor, I would have them fill out that form to show to prove they're not us person. Correct. Right.  

David:    00:39:11    So yeah, if you're, what's it called now? Upwork, if you're using Upwork formerly Elance or you know some of these kind of things and you're working for a US business, you may get one of these forms. They may say please fill this out. And it is not because they're trying to report you to the IRS or get you in trouble or anything like that. It's because on their taxes when they file and they say, okay, yeah, I paid X amount of money to my developer, they need, they might need to show proof that their developer was not a US person who should be reporting into the system as well.  

Kristin:    00:39:49    Right.  

David:    00:39:50    It's, you know, this whole big brother thing that US is putting together to make sure everybody who should be paying is paying.  

Kristin:    00:39:57    So for US citizens who are self-employed, maybe run a small online business or solopreneurs and they're hiring subcontractors in the US or abroad, should they be asking for anything else from those subcontractors besides like a, you know, like a 1099 or W9? Well  

David:    00:40:19    You know, you as the employer have to issue the 1099 nines at the end of the year so that other people can fill out their taxes. So if you just started a business and you're hiring a couple people here and there, you know, if you're doing it through something like Upwork, Upwork will probably take care of that for you. Uh, I haven't used it in a little bit so I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I'm pretty sure they used to file the 1099 for you. Okay. But if you're hiring people that way, like contractors on short gigs and stuff like that, you are responsible for issuing a 1099 for them. The way you get the information to issue that 1099 is for by getting the W8 or W9 from people so that you have the proper details to issue the proper form.  

Kristin:    00:41:07    Right. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that for people because it's, you know, these are things that we don't learn in high school or college. It's just you figure it out once you get out program or MB program for that matter. Good thing I used to read the Wall Street Journal in college and I decided to open a Roth IRA, but my MBA program never even mentioned investing. So another thing that I think a lot of people will want clarity on is, uh, let's say that they are remote employees and they can work from anywhere. Now it's the pandemic or it's after the pandemic, they're able to just kind of go abroad. Is there really anything that they need to do differently in their tax reporting If they're just doing, let's say a workation in Mexico for a month and then they go to Croatia for three months and then they're back in the US and then they go to wherever Or can they just usually file as normal unless they're really extended overseas residents, you know, more than 330 days a year or multiple years?  

David:    00:42:16    It's an interesting question. So from the US standpoint, the person can just file as normal. Where it gets interesting is if you're in these different countries and you're working, at some point those countries are gonna ask you to pay taxes to them and the company you work for might have issues because the employees are mobile and they're outside the us You know, the global tax system is not set up for what we're experiencing right now and you know, the direction it's heading going forward. There's no real good answer to that. You know, I know like it can be really hard in a place like London to bring in a temporary worker from the US if you have an office in London. 'cause they're like, well you should be hiring locally. Like if you need extra people, get a local person to do it. Don't import somebody from somewhere else.  

David:    00:43:07    And you know, the US does that kind of thing as well as an individual, it's an easier answer because that individual can just file their taxes to make sure their own taxes are correct. But if you're the employer, it might be a more difficult question to answer because if that person's in a country, uh, where you have an office or you know where you have enough sales to make to be taxable in that country, maybe that person is creating a domicile for you in that territory or in that country and all of a sudden that could cause all kinds of problems at the corporate level, uh, that nobody's expecting.  

Kristin:    00:43:48    Yes. That's why Facebook and all these companies were putting out statements. I presume that people couldn't leave the state or they couldn't leave the country. I think it was probably for concerns over that. And then at Greenback, do you all have corporate clients?  

David:    00:44:05    You know, we have some small business clients and things like that. Uh, we haven't landed Facebook or Google yet, but yeah, if you're listening, yeah,  

Kristin:    00:44:13    <laugh>, I think that's another episode that's separate topic but <laugh>, um, just to clarify for people, if you're just nomad around, there might not be that many different things you need to file unless you have that combined. Is it $10,000 or more in international bank accounts which would require the FBAR, correct. Correct. Yep. Are there any other forms that expats need to know about?  

David:    00:44:42    Yeah, so you know, if you have more money than that, like if you're living overseas and you have, I think it's uh, 200,000 as an individual, 400 is a couple. Uh, you might have to file the FACTA forms and if you were an expat and now you moved back to the states, that number drops uh, to 50,000 and a hundred thousand. So, you know, that's something you want to be aware of. If you set up a foreign business, you know, maybe it's a corporation to own property or something like that, you will have to file a 5471 to report those assets to the IRS. Uh, that's basically filing a tax return for a foreign corporation to the IRS. Um, if you are a diligent saver and you make the mistake of investing in foreign mutual funds, uh, those will be counted as foreign investment trusts and you'll have to file the uh, PFIC paperwork for those. There's a lot of things that you probably don't know about if you go overseas. The scary thing is nobody tells you about it, no, uh, nobody says, oh okay. Hey Steve, you know, you just bought a property in Costa Rica and you did it through a corporation that you set up in Costa Rica. Please remember to file this form. Here's the details of how to do it. Please send this to your accountant.  

Kristin:    00:46:06    You might have to tell your accountant, Hey, did you file that for me? I filled it out. They'll be like, what? Yeah, sure.  

David:    00:46:13    You know, that's why if you are going overseas, it's worth talking to a company like ours 'cause this is what we do all day long. We have a questionnaire we ask everybody to complete and it's designed to find these things out. It's, yeah, it asks the questions to keep you out of trouble. Uh, not because we're nosy.  

Kristin:    00:46:34    Yeah. And I should just say to everyone, this is not like a paid promotion or anything for Greenback Tax services. <laugh>, I actually just sent them my video about your survey that, that we did a video and a podcast about because I found that so interesting, your expat tax survey, but also I found your company in 2018 when I was firing my third or fourth accountant and you guys were among the, my top three picks for who to work with. And I ended up working with my friend Grace, who's not taking any clients right now, but we just became friends and we traveled together and everything. But I already interviewed you guys back in, not you, but someone from your firm in 2018 when I was grilling International Expat Accountants. I think I contacted 20 companies. And so you passed the test back then before I even had a podcast. So congratulations <laugh> <laugh>. Okay. What are some deadlines that expats should know about? Because there are some later deadlines and some extensions that are available and expats are notorious for procrastinating on their taxes. So what are some dates that people should know about?  

David:    00:47:47    Uh, well, you know, everybody knows the April 15th tax deadline. That's the deadline if you're in the United States. If you are living overseas, then your tax deadline is June 15th and if you need to or if you want to, you can file an extension and you can extend that out all the way to October 15th.  

Kristin:    00:48:08    Okay. And why do you think that expats file late or let's say have a reputation for filing late and filing extensions or not filing at all and then having to file multiple years?   

David:    00:48:21    Uh, We're just having too much fun overseas to bother <laugh>. No, I, yeah, I think the main thing is that you don't have the constant reminders that you have when you're in the US. You know, TurboTax, H&R Block, all these companies are not spending gazillions of dollars on TV and radio ads that are just bombarding you every day up to the deadline. Uh, that's one thing. And the other is you're probably more concerned about getting your local tax stuff filed than you are about the US tax stuff. And if you're in the UK, you know, UK tax year end is in April, uh, in Australia it is the end of June, uh, in Hong Kong it's a different deadline. So you know, like different countries around the world all have different deadlines and as an expat you'll usually want your foreign documents completed so that you can get a tax credit on your US documents if you're filing, uh, in the US as well.  

Kristin:    00:49:25    Yeah, Costa Rica, they finally changed their tax year to coincide with the US, I believe, but before it was always an awkward time. I think it was in September or October and so I always had to get multiple years of statements. So it can be definitely, we're simplifying a very complex topic everyone, so make sure to hire a professional  

David:    00:49:48    <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:49:49    Are there any special considerations that retirees should know about, like places where they can get their social security for example, or anything else interesting that retirees should know?  

David:    00:50:03    You know, you can receive social security outside the US so that's a good thing to know. Uh, it is taxable in the US it's not considered earned income, so, uh, you wouldn't use the foreign earned income to offset that if you have rental properties and things like that. Same thing, that's not earned income, that's passive income, so you can't use the foreign earned income exclusion on that. You know, that's probably the main thing for, you know, people who are retired.  

Kristin:    00:50:31    Okay. And then there was a time during the Obama administration that expats could avoid the getting fined if they didn't have healthcare, if they were living abroad and then that was repealed. Then we had the Trump administration. Are there any upcoming changes regarding either taxes or healthcare for people living abroad that we should know about with the current Biden administration?  

David:    00:51:00    Yeah, I think, uh, one thing we can all be pretty confident about going forward is that taxes are going to increase. So it might be worth people looking at, you know, transferring. Like if you can exclude a lot of your income from taxation, you might consider taking traditional IRAs or traditional 401Ks and rolling them into the Roth version and using your personal deduction, your personal ex, you know, your personal deduction to avoid paying tax on that. So you do it over a series of years. Uh, so you take it from being taxable in the future to being tax free in the future. You can't use the foreign earned income exclusion for that, but you can use your, the standard deduction for that kind  

Kristin:    00:51:49    Of thing. Okay. So people can max out their Roth IRAs and then-- 

David:    00:51:54    No,  you can't max out a Roth IRA. This is separate. So if you have a 401K from when you're in the US and let's say you now live and work in Europe somewhere, you can take that 401K and transfer it to a traditional IRA. Okay, so you do a direct rollover from your old company 401K plan to a Vanguard or Fidelity traditional IRA plan. Then you figure out how much standard deduction you have to work with and you transfer a chunk of it each year from traditional to Roth so that you're not, usually that's taxable, you'd have to pay tax out of pocket on that transition. But if you have excess standard deduction because your income's offset by the foreign earned income exclusion, you can utilize your standard deduction that way and transfer that from a taxable, you know, account into a tax free account so that you have tax free retirement income in the future.  

Kristin:    00:52:59    Okay. That's a very valuable tip. Thank you for sharing that.  

David:    00:53:04    With, uh, with IRAs, you're, if you're excluding all of your income using the foreign earned income exclusion, then you can't contribute to a Roth IRA. But what you can do is contribute to a, you would have to be earning over the foreign earned income exclusion amount. But what you can do is contribute to a traditional IRA not take the tax deduction and then convert that to a Roth IRA. And that process is nicknamed a backdoor IRA or backdoor Roth. And so effectively what you're doing is taking, you know, you already didn't pay tax on a bunch of money, but then with the money you are paying tax on, you're getting a Roth contribution out of that.

Kristin:    00:53:52     Okay, that's great. I did not know about that. <laugh>,  

David:    00:53:55    Like if you're under the foreign earned income exclusion limit, uh, you can just put that money, like if you have excess money, if you're saving, you can just contribute that to a regular mutual fund. Or better yet, you can buy ETFs, exchange traded funds and that money's already tax free. So you're taking tax free money, you're buying securities with it, and what you can do then it's called Tax Gain Harvesting. Depending on what tax bracket you fall into, you either will or won't have capital gains, but when years you don't have any capital gains, you can sell some of the appreciated assets to increase the basis in those assets and keep them keep, if you keep increasing the basis every year, then in the future when you sell those assets, you won't have any taxable gain on those assets.

Kristin: Okay.

David: That might be like a Yeah, three point, yeah. 300 level class as opposed to a Yeah, 101. 

Kristin:    00:54:57    If you learn something new every day, I tell you what, David <laugh>, I'm taking notes over here. <laugh>, if you don't ask you the answer's, no. Like, that's why I'm asking all these questions. You guys, these are questions that have come up over 15, 20 years of living overseas and I'm still learning new things. Even after interviewing many, many accountants. So you're passing with flying colors. <laugh>, <laugh>. Okay, well let's jump into the lightning round then. I don't know if this is a lightning round question. I I say lightning round and then people probably roll their eyes. They're like, these are long questions,Kristin <laugh>. Um, what is your opinion on the digital nomad visas everywhere?  

David:    00:55:39    I, I think they're great. I think, uh, a lot of people wanna be able to work overseas and visas can be a big headache or hassle to get. So, you know, if countries make it easier to get visas that allow you to work there and you're then paying money into the local economy, maybe you're not paying taxes into the local economy, but you're supporting local restaurants and you know, vendors and all this kinda stuff. I think that's good for the local economies.  

Kristin:    00:56:08    Yeah.  

David:    00:56:08    And it's enjoyable for the people getting the visas.  

Kristin:    00:56:11    Yes. It makes things a lot easier. It was so surreal to see Costa Rica announce their remote work visa. I was like, I've been jumping through hoops for so many years over a decade, and now they're just like, yeah, sure. Stay, stay as long as you are--  

David:    00:56:26    <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:56:28    Okay.  

David:    00:56:29    Seriously, now you do this <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:56:32    Um, what accounting or bookkeeping software do you guys like to recommend?  

David:    00:56:39    In what way? What do you-- 

Kristin:    00:56:40    I guess for, for expats, retirees, nomads, people that are trying to stay on top of their own bookkeeping before, so let's say your ideal client, like what would you want people to give you when it's tax time? What format would it be in?   

David:    00:56:56   So if you're a business owner, uh, my personal favorite is Xero, uh, because I find that the easiest for a lay person to understand. If you're just living and working overseas, we usually ask for all the source documents. We want the accountants to really get into the nitty gritty detail of things to understand what's happening. We wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable if you just handed us an Excel spreadsheet that said, this is everything I made. This is everything I spent, you know, like a corporate P&L for an individual. Um, we wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable with that because, you know, we're signing off the tax return, we're vouching for things, so we want to see the detail behind it. Yeah, we want the pay stubs or we want, you know, the W2 equivalent from whatever country you're in.  

Kristin:    00:57:44    You want, you want our receipts that are in Czech from going to lunch in Czech Republic, like in Prague. 

David:    00:57:51    No. Like, you know, that kind of thing. You're not gonna get a deduction for that as an individual. Uh, as a business you might get some deduction for that. And so yeah, if you're, usually, if you have a phone app or something like that, you just want to take a picture of those things. And then you log the credit card receipt in zero and stuff like that. Right. Um, but as an individual you're not gonna get a lot of those deductions because as an individual, lunch isn't a deduction. It's only for a business owner if you're taking clients out and then you only get part of it and stuff like that

Kristin:    00:58:24   Yeah. So people should still be scanning their bus ticket in Peru, but they're not necessarily gonna get a deduction for it if they're just going sightseeing. But if it was a business related expense, like they're going to a conference in another country or something like that, then it could be.

David:    00:58:42     yeah, like if you have any business receipts or anything like that, save those. Okay. Yeah, if you're renting a house overseas, make sure you have receipts for that. If you're paying utility bills overseas, make sure you have receipts for that. Those are the kind of things we can work with.  

Kristin:    00:58:56    Okay. Keep your Airbnb reservations, guys. <laugh> and travel related. How many countries have you guys been to total?

Carrie:  Oh, we just counted Timmy's and we didn't count our own.  

David:    00:59:06    Yeah. I, I don't know. For us, I think for the boys though, our 11 year old, it is 24, our eight year old it's 17, I wanna say. And Billy's 11.   

Carrie:    00:59:20    Yes. Something like that. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:59:22    So you've been to more, it's somewhere around more than 25.  

Carrie:    00:59:26    Yeah. I think I would, if I had to guess, it's probably in the mid thirties. Yeah. Mid thirties.  

David:    00:59:30    Maybe more. Well, maybe  

Carrie:    00:59:31    More for us it would be forties.  

David:    00:59:32    Yeah. Forties or fifties at least.

Carrie:    00:59:33    You know what, now we're gonna go figure that out.  

Kristin:    00:59:36    Go count. TripAdvisor has a good thing where you can track which cities you've been to. It's kind of fun for whenever you're bored, just put in all the cities and then you can see how many countries you've been to. But um, yeah, check that out. We'll link to that in the show notes. I think it's, it -- 

David:    00:59:51    Depends on what you count as well. It's like, you know, do you mean just crossing the border? Like, we went to Croatia and we took a bus to Montenegro to see a Madonna concert because why wouldn't you do that <laugh>? And uh, you know, does that count as being in Montenegro?   

Carrie:    01:00:05    We were there for a day, so that's kind of on the fence, right? I think that it's not like an airport.

Kristin:    01:00:09    You know, maybe not in an airport if you're on a layover, but if you like leave and go out into the country, I think it counts. I once went on a boat to Martinique and we only were there for the day and I kind of felt guilty counting it, but I did. 'cause you know, we ate lunch, we walked around, we climbed a mountain that counts <laugh>. Okay. If you were to pick two favorite places, I know everyone hates this favorite places question 'cause it's hard to pick one. But what is one country that you could recommend to people that was a really good place to be productive and work remotely? And what is a country or a destination that you really love for relaxation and vacation? 

Carrie:    01:00:51   Um, Relaxation and vacation. I would say Spain. You know, we lived in Barcelona and maybe it's just 'cause I've got that on my mind, you know, seeing that Spain's opening up. But I think that's a place where it's actually kind of hard to get stuff done <laugh>. But it's a great place. You've got beaches, you've got restaurants, you've got cities. You know, it's just kind of a, a wonderful place to, um, to enjoy. Yeah. Um, in terms of getting things done, I would say that Bali was pretty easy to get things done. It's just a very slow pace of life, you know, so, you know, you're not finding, you're, you're finding that you can actually kind of be pretty immersed in what you're working on and doing. And so I found that I had the ability to focus. It might've also just been partly 'cause of the time zone. You don't have the constant interruptions of being in the same time zone as everybody else. But, um, I definitely found that Bali was, was good for that.

Kristin:    01:01:37    Yeah. Even though it's not good, I mean, it's not fun getting up that early. I do like being a day ahead of everybody and you get less phone calls and emails during your workday.  

David:    01:01:49    There's no boomerang, you know? Yeah. It's not like you send somebody an email and they send you 'em back. Like by the time you start your day, everybody in the US has finished theirs. So your, your inbox is everything you have to do for that day. And if you can plow through that in two or three hours, you're done for the rest of the day.  

Kristin:    01:02:05    Yeah. You get that closure and then you can go surfing. I miss Bali. I need to start traveling again. Um, <laugh>, what is one destination on your bucket list?

David: Greece.

Kristin: Oh, that's coming up. When, when are you going there? Tuesday. Oh wow. Okay. Glad I caught you before you left.  

Carrie:    01:02:21    <laugh> <laugh>.  

Kristin:    01:02:23    Um, are there any books that you could recommend that either helped inspire your wanderlust or kind of changed your worldview?  

Carrie:    01:02:32    Oh, I mean, I, gosh, I read like a million books, but I, you know, I think for, I think for like a lot of the parents that are listening, one of the things you mentioned earlier is how, what a struggle people have thinking how you can do this with a family. And there's a lot of really great books and I, I can send you some of the names of 'em, I can't remember some of 'em offhand, but that really kind of talk through, you know, the concept of education on the road and world schooling and globe schooling as opposed to, you know, traditional schooling and why that, how that's doable. Like how it actually sort of day to day is doable as well as why it's so good for the kids. So it might be, you know, that might be something that I would recommend because it's not something people usually think about and, you know, it's actually way easier than <laugh>, you know, than it probably is perceived to be.  

Kristin:    01:03:17    Yeah. Well just send me those in an email and we'll link to them in the show notes because no one's ever mentioned those. So that's really valuable. You guys managed a remote company across multiple time zones and borders. What are some of the tools or apps that you use for remote productivity?  

Carrie:    01:03:36    So we use a tool called Podio as our kind of one stop everything. So it's a team collaboration, project management. And, um, we've used it, gosh, I wanna say for like, since it practically, since it felt like it started. Like I feel like we were one of their first <laugh>, you know, clients practically. And it works fabulously for us. So the idea of having everybody in the same place, it's kind of like the hub. Um, we strayed for a little bit and said, oh, okay, Podio is kind of where people will do their, you know, some of the collaboration and then we'll have this tool to do this and, but all of these other specialized softwares and I actually think that can be really distracting. So, um, we moved everything back pretty much. I mean, we have things obviously like bookkeeping, softwares and stuff that you really need a specialized tool, but the good thing about something about having one place is it's really easy to collect information. You, you know, aren't trying to figure out multiple different logins. Um, so that's worked well for us. Yeah. Um, the other platform, obviously not obviously, but the other platform that we use is Salesforce or Client Portal and all of the, you know, workflow management of the actual, you know, tax preparation.  

Kristin:    01:04:44    Okay. So clients submit their documents through that. 

Carrie:    01:04:47    It's a portal that's built on Salesforce, so it's a custom, custom built portal, but Salesforce is the engine that runs it.

Kristin:    01:04:54     Okay. Nice. I'm gonna check out that po because I do end up getting, I end up having a lot of different project management apps and it's counterproductive. I just wanna have one, one thing that does everything well. Okay. And then you guys have a really detailed and transparent price list, so we're gonna link to that of all of your services and prices in the show notes because very few accounting firms do that, that, that I've ever seen. So I think that's really great that you guys have just such straightforward, this is what we do, this is how much it costs, like pick from the menu, what do you need so everyone can go there to, uh, look for that. And then I also saw that you have like a free checklist on your site. Can you just tell us what that is and then where can people get in touch if they wanna learn more information? 

David:    01:05:42    Sure.  So, you know, the checklist is just there to kind of give you a guide to, uh, what you need to pull together to get your taxes going. 'cause again, when you go overseas, it's highly likely that you're not gonna know everything you need or that your accountant needs. So it's just another thing to try and help people stay out of trouble. Uh, that that's the biggest thing, right? If you want to avoid trouble, just don't get in trouble in the first place. You know, I, I would also just as a an aside say, check out our blog. I think we've got one of the best blogs on the internet when it comes to expat taxes and all the different areas of it. And unlike the IRS, ours is written in a way that people can understand. So even if you're not a tax expert or anything like that, uh, it should be absorbable to you. And we also do a lot of webinars for folks. So, uh, if you want to learn about a certain topic, check out our webinars that we've already had or sign up for the ones that are coming. Yeah, if you wanna get in touch with us, just go to greenbacktackservices.com and you know, hit contact us and that's where we are.  

Kristin:    01:06:47    Great. Yeah, it's interesting how government websites can make the English language sound like Greek, like I read a sentence 10 times and it still doesn't make sense. They somehow overly complicate everything. So I really appreciate having these complex topics in plain English, in layman's terms, so to speak. So thank you for all that you're doing. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your tax and world travel wisdom with us. It was great speaking with you guys. Have a great trip to Greece and I hope that this info was valuable for our everyone listening. And, uh, we'll link to everything in the show notes, including your very cool expat tax survey. And yeah, hope to cross paths with you soon.

David & Carrie: Awesome. Thank you very much.

Kristin: Thanks.

David & Carrie: Bye.

Kristin:  If one of the reasons you want to travel or live abroad is to meet new people, well, you're definitely not alone.  

Kristin:    01:07:46    But even if you're not traveling right now, did you know that you can start connecting with other aspiring and experienced digital nomads today? It's true. As you know, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And in the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook group, you can connect with 4,000 other like-minded people from around the world who all share the same values of freedom and location independence. Plus, if you wanna become part of my inner circle, you can join my Patreon page for $5 per month and get direct access to private message me. Submit your questions for my podcast guests, contribute your opinion on new content ideas, and get early access to preview all of my YouTube videos before they're published. You'll also get to attend monthly private Zoom Hangouts with myself and other patrons. We just had a one and a half hour call last night with patrons from around the world calling in from places like Bali, California, Michigan, and Nebraska. It was so much fun. And you can join us for the next call by becoming a patron today at patreon.com/travelingwithKristin. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/travelingwithKristin.