Lesson learned: If you're moving to a foreign country you need to time the move so in a tax year you meet the bona fide residence requirement (living in the foreign country for 330 days in the calendar year). If you don't meet this requirement, then you get to pay a nice chunk of change to the US government....in addition to the taxes paid in the foreign country. Joy! Although, if you still have a house in the US / other deductions, Schedule A will help; but for DINKs (double income no kids) that sold everything, there's no hope :(
As you can assume from the sarcasm, we did not meet the bona fide residence requirement. So, I had to write out a nice fat check to the AIG execs, err, I mean US government. On the upside, I know more about form 1116 than I ever wanted to! We also had to fill out a foreign bank account form, which is a little too 'big brother' for me. I'll patiently wait for the other shoe to drop and the request for taxes on that, too. Hmph.
As an aside....the word for taxes in danish is SKAT, which is the same as honey/sweetheart. Too funny
Skat is the Danish word for treasure.
ReplyDeleteI guess the tax company collects treasure.
And your sweetheart/honey is your treasure.
That's why tax and sweetheart share the same word in Danish - treasure.
Another funny thing in Danish, the Danish word for married and poison is the same: "gift".
ReplyDeleteA saying in Danish is: "Gift, det er noget man tager for ikke at blive det".
Translates into dsomething like "Gift(poison), that is something you take not to avoid getting gift(married)".
Definitions for skat: treasure, tax, darling, duty
ReplyDeleteAnd, thank you for the lesson, Anon from the University of Liverpool.
ReplyDeleteI guess it ended up being a good thing that I was unemployed until January!! LOL... see, I was whining for nothing!
ReplyDelete