It is that time of year where I have to be reminded that the US government screws all of us living overseas over by making us file taxes. Anyway, as I was in the process getting ready to do my taxes, I remembered reading somewhere on Reddit sometime back about people getting the US child tax credit even though they lived overseas. My son was born last year so I decided to look into it and it seems almost too good to be true? Want to make sure I'm not missing any "gotchas" here if I go ahead and file this. My understanding is:
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I can get $1700 because my salary is less than $200,000. (Though I don't understand how the money is actually sent. Transfer to my Wise account?)
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In order to do this, I need to switch from the FEIE (which I have been doing since coming to Japan) to the FTC, but this shouldn't affect how much I pay in taxes ($0) because Japanese taxes are higher than US ones
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I need to apply for my son's US social security number to do this. He is already a US citizen and has a US passport, I just forgot to apply for the SSN. Because he is already a citizen, getting him an SSN won't trigger any new tax obligations or problems in the future.
Am I missing something here? Would love to hear from anyone else who is doing this. If it's a complicated process I am considering hiring someone to do my taxes this year because even after paying someone I would still come out ahead if I can get this money.
by BlueSandbar