Ten figures that get misquoted, with their clauses
Short pieces on the United States expatriate figures that get quoted wrong most often. Each one is built from rules in the store, so every number on it carries the section of the document that set it and the date it was read, and anything this site has not read is left unstated rather than filled in from memory.
None of these guides asks how much tax you owe. Each asks whether a rule applies to you, and the answer turns on a threshold, a rate or a period published in a document. That is what makes them unusually well suited to being stored as rules: there is a figure, it has a source, it has a tax year, and it either applies or it does not.
Looking for what a salary leaves instead? UK take-home pay for 272 salaries, each computed band by band from the published rates.
The 10
Each card leads with the figure, because on every one of these subjects the figure is the answer and burying it under a definition nobody needed is the shape of page this site exists to be an alternative to.
Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, tax year by tax year
For tax year 2026 the foreign earned income exclusion under IRC §911(b)(2)(D)(i) is $132,900. For tax year 2025 it is $130,000 and for 2024 it is $126,500.
Revenue procedures, 3 tax years heldReporting1 rule$10,000aggregate, at any point in the yearThe FBAR threshold, and the word that trips people up
An FBAR is required when the aggregate value of your foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the calendar year. It is an aggregate test across every account, and it is measured at the highest point in the year, not on the last day.
31 CFR 1010.350, aggregate value testReporting10 rules10thresholds, and which applies depends on youForm 8938 thresholds, all ten of them
Form 8938 thresholds depend on three things at once: your filing status, whether you live abroad, and whether the value is measured on the last day of the year or at any point in it. A single filer living abroad reports at $200,000 on the last day of the year or $300,000 at any time during it.
IRC 6038D and the Form 8938 instructionsCredit4 rules$300 / $600the ceiling for skipping Form 1116The foreign tax credit, and when you can skip Form 1116
If your total creditable foreign taxes are $300 or less, or $600 or less on a joint return, you may claim the foreign tax credit directly on your return without filing Form 1116. Above that ceiling the form is required, and only a credit computed on the form can be carried back 1 year or forward 10 years.
IRC 904(j) and the Form 1116 instructionsCompliance5 rules3 + 6returns and FBARs, plus one testStreamlined filing: three returns, six FBARs, and one test that decides the penalty
The streamlined procedures require 3 years of delinquent or amended returns and 6 years of delinquent FBARs. A taxpayer who meets the non-residency test, which requires no United States abode and at least 330 full days outside the country in one of the covered years, pays no miscellaneous offshore penalty. A taxpayer who does not pays 5% of the highest aggregate value of the assets concerned.
IRS streamlined filing compliance proceduresTreaty2 rules$1,000penalty per undisclosed position, individualsClaiming a tax treaty benefit, and the disclosure that goes with it
Where you take a position that a United States tax treaty overrides or modifies the Internal Revenue Code, you generally disclose it on Form 8833 with your return. The penalty for failing to disclose is $1,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a C corporation, per failure, and it applies even where the treaty position itself is entirely correct.
IRC 6114 and IRC 6712Reporting8 rules$100,000from an individual, and $20,573 from an entityForm 3520, and the two thresholds that are not the same number
Form 3520 reports gifts and bequests from foreign persons above $100,000 where the donor is a nonresident alien individual or a foreign estate, and above $20,573 for tax year 2026 where the donor is a foreign corporation or partnership. It also reports transfers to and distributions from foreign trusts, where the penalty for not filing starts at the greater of $10,000 or 35% of the gross value involved.
IRC 6039F and IRC 6677Investment3 rules$25,000de minimis, $50,000 filing jointlyPFICs, Form 8621, and why a foreign index fund is the problem
A United States person holding stock in a passive foreign investment company generally files Form 8621. The filing exception applies where the aggregate value is $25,000 or less, or $50,000 or less on a joint return, on the last day of the tax year, and there is no excess distribution and no recognised gain. An excess distribution is the part of a distribution above 125% of the average of the three preceding years.
IRC 1291 to 1298 and the Form 8621 instructionsOwnership2 rules10% / 50%shareholder test, then control testControlled foreign corporations, and the two percentages that decide everything
You are a United States shareholder of a foreign corporation if you own, directly, indirectly or constructively, 10% or more of its total combined voting power or value. The corporation is a controlled foreign corporation if United States shareholders together own more than 50% of it. Reaching both tests brings Form 5471 and the current-inclusion regimes with it.
IRC 951(b) and IRC 957(a)Exit8 rules$2,000,000net worth test, one of threeRenouncing US citizenship, and the three tests that decide what it costs
Renouncing United States citizenship or giving up long-term permanent residence triggers the section 877A mark-to-market regime only for a covered expatriate. There are three tests and meeting any one is enough: average annual net income tax above $211,000 for 2026, net worth of $2,000,000 or more, or failure to certify 5 years of federal tax compliance on Form 8854. A covered expatriate's deemed net gain is reduced by $910,000 for tax year 2026.
IRC 877A and IRC 877(a)(2)Every headline figure, and the rules behind it
One row per guide, so the whole set can be read in one pass. Where a figure is indexed for inflation the store holds three tax years of it, and the guide states all of them rather than the current one, because the year that applies to you is the year you earned the income, not the year you file.
What these ten have in common
Every one of them is an obligation rather than a calculation. None asks how much tax you owe; each asks whether a rule applies to you, and the answer turns on a threshold, a rate or a period published in a document. That makes them unusually well suited to being stored as rules: there is a figure, it has a source, it has a tax year, and it either applies or it does not. Between them these pages turn on 46 rules in the store.
They also share a penalty structure that catches people out. On most of these the cost of missing a form is far larger than any tax that was owed, and several apply to somebody who owes nothing at all. A person who has excluded every dollar of their income under the foreign earned income exclusion can still be required to file an FBAR and a Form 8938, because those turn on account balances rather than on tax.
The four ways they get misquoted
Routinely, and always in the same four shapes. Each one is a structural error rather than a careless one, which is why the store is built to make it impossible rather than merely discouraged.
The tax year read as the filing year
Search for the foreign earned income exclusion and you will find $130,000 called "the 2027 figure". It is not: it is the figure for tax year 2025, which is filed during 2026. The error runs in the direction that gets people into trouble.
A whole-year test described as a year-end one
The FBAR threshold is exceeded if the aggregate value went above $10,000 at any time in the calendar year. A page that says "if you hold over $10,000" tells somebody who moved money in March and out in April that they have nothing to file.
Several thresholds summarised as one
Form 8938 has 10 thresholds and the one that applies to you depends on where you live, how you file and which test is being applied. A page that states one of them is right for one reader and wrong for the other nine.
An indexed figure quoted beside a fixed one
The Form 3520 threshold for a gift from a foreign corporation is indexed and moves every year; the one for a gift from an individual is $100,000 and does not. Quoting both as though both were fixed is how a page stays half right for years without anybody noticing.
Each guide states its figures with the section of the document that set them and the date they were read. Where a related fact has not been read into the store, a statutory day count or a definition of an account type, the guide says so rather than reaching for it. A page that quotes a day count from memory is doing the thing that makes this whole subject unreliable, and the difference between a source and a recollection is invisible to a reader unless the page makes it visible.
Why these ten, and not thirty
These are the obligations that catch people out: the ones with a filing threshold rather than a tax bill behind them, where the penalty for missing a form is far larger than any tax that was owed, and where the threshold is quoted for the wrong year more often than any other figure in the subject.
A guide only exists here when the rule store already holds the figures it turns on. That constraint is the reason there are ten rather than thirty. Writing a page about a subject we have not read the documents for would mean stating numbers from memory, which is the failure mode the whole project is built to make impossible. When a source is read and ingested, the guide becomes possible; until then, its absence is more honest than its presence.
Each page follows the same shape: the answer in one sentence at the top, the figures in a table with the section of the document that set each one, the situations where people get it wrong worked through with numbers rather than described in the abstract, and then the questions readers actually ask. The last section of every guide names what is not modelled, because the boundary of a claim is part of the claim.
By what people are actually trying to find out, checked against what this site can answer from a document rather than from memory. Each of these ten turns on a specific figure, that figure is on record here with the clause that set it, and the question behind it is asked far more often than it is answered with a year attached.
One more thing the demand settled: the language a reader searches in
The English-language demand in this subject is overwhelmingly United States connected, and the equivalent demand in continental markets exists almost entirely in the local language. That is a different site rather than a translation, and pretending otherwise would mean writing English pages for readers who are not searching in English. The guides here are English because their readers are.
Demand decides what gets written. It does not decide what gets said. Every figure in these guides comes from the document that set it, and where the store holds no rule the guide names the gap instead of filling it. A page that ranks and misinforms is worse than no page, because a reader who checks nothing has no way to tell it apart from one that is right.
How to use this site if you live abroad
There are two separate questions and conflating them is what makes people miss things for years. They have different shapes, different answers and different parts of this site.
What the country you live in takes from your salary
That is a calculation, it depends on your gross pay, and the calculators answer it: pick the jurisdiction, put in a salary, and the deductions come out band by band with the rule behind each rate. Every jurisdiction on the list has been checked against the average rates the OECD publishes independently for a single person at three incomes.
Every jurisdictionWhat your home country still requires of you
For a US person that is not a calculation at all: it is a set of thresholds, and being over one triggers an obligation regardless of how much tax you owe or whether you owe any. The guides answer that. Somebody who has excluded all of their income under the foreign earned income exclusion may still be required to file an FBAR, a Form 8938, or both, because those turn on account balances rather than on tax.
The ten guidesA sensible order is: read the guide for the obligation you think might apply, check the figure against its stated tax year, then use the calculator for the country you live in to know what is actually being taken from your pay. Those two facts together are what any adviser will ask for in the first ten minutes, and arriving with them is the difference between a short conversation and a long one.
What is not here, and why that is stated
Naming the gaps is part of the claim, so here they are. Each of these is a place where a page like this normally reaches for a paraphrase, and a paraphrased structure is where a page stops being checkable.
No treaty text
There are more than sixty United States income tax treaties, each with its own articles and its own exceptions to its own saving clause, and none of them is in the rule store. The Form 8833 guide states the disclosure obligation and its penalty, which are the same whichever treaty you are reading, and stops there.
No computations
The foreign tax credit limitation formula, the mechanics of a qualified electing fund or mark-to-market election, and the inclusion arithmetic under subpart F and the global intangible rules are structures rather than figures. Paraphrasing a structure is where a page like this stops being checkable.
No scope definitions
What counts as a foreign financial account, what counts as a foreign trust, and how ownership is attributed between family members are all definitions rather than figures. Each guide names the boundary it is standing at instead of stepping over it.
Nothing for non-US persons
The reporting obligations these guides describe follow United States citizenship and residence. The equivalent regimes elsewhere are a different set of documents this site has not read, and the calculators are the part of this site that is not US-specific.
A note on what a guide is for
Most pages on these subjects are written to be found. That produces a particular shape: a definition nobody needed, a figure without a year, a list of considerations, and a call to speak to an adviser. The reader arrives with one question and leaves with the same question and a vague sense that it is complicated.
These guides are written to be finished. The answer is in the first sentence with the year it applies to, the figures are in a table with the section of the document behind each one, and the situations where people get it wrong are worked through with numbers rather than described in the abstract. If a page here tells you that you are under a threshold, you should be able to check that claim against the source in about two minutes, and every part of the page is arranged to make that possible.
Questions about these guides
Are these guides tax advice?
No. They state figures with their sources and explain what the figures mean. They do not know your circumstances, and every one of these rules has conditions that turn on facts about you. Use them to check a number you were given, or to arrive at a conversation with an adviser already knowing what the number is.
How often are the figures updated?
Every rule carries the date it was read and a maximum age. A figure past that age is read again before it is published, so it cannot quietly go stale behind a page that still looks current. Re-reading the sources is a single step, and what changed is printed as a diff rather than absorbed silently.
Why do you say what you do not know?
Because the boundary of a claim is part of the claim. A page that states ten facts confidently when it has sources for eight of them has taught you nothing about which eight. Naming the gap costs a little authority and buys the reader the ability to trust the rest.
Can I check the sources myself?
Yes, and that is the point. Every figure names the document, the section within it, and the date it was read. The exact sentence is archived and hashed, so if the source changes the change is surfaced rather than absorbed. The source of record lists every document this site has read, and the whole ruleset is downloadable.
Do these apply to US citizens only?
All of them are obligations of US persons, which includes citizens, green card holders and certain others regardless of where they live, and that reach is what makes them the busiest questions in the expatriate seam. Two of them reach further than people expect: the exit tax catches long-term permanent residents who never became citizens, and the controlled foreign corporation tests can be met through stock owned by a relative. The calculators cover several other countries and are not US-specific.
Will there be more guides?
When the underlying figures are ingested, yes, and not before. A guide exists here only once the rule store holds every figure it turns on, because writing one first would mean stating numbers from memory or from another website, which is the failure that makes this subject unreliable online.
The rest of the site
The guides deal with reporting obligations and fixed amounts. The calculators deal with what is actually deducted from a salary. Every jurisdiction we compute is listed with the authority behind its rates and the simplifications we make, and 272 UK salaries have their own pages showing the bands each one crosses. The methodology explains how a figure gets from a government document into a page, and the source of record lists every document read.