Question - Form 2555, Turbo Tax, and second year of filing together.

[WishUsLuck 0]

Hello there,

Thanks to the awesome resources on this site, my husband (Canadian Citizen) and I (USC) filed our taxes last year with apparently no problems. Last year was the first time we filed together (for tax year 2013) - he moved here in mid-2013, and he had some income earlier that year from Canada, so we filed our 1040 with a form 2555 using Turbo Tax.

This leads to my question. This year, there was no income from Canada involved at all (not even bank interest, etc.). We both have jobs, so we got our W2s and such as normal. When we went to use Turbo Tax, everything seemed fine until we got to the "error check" at the end. Apparently Turbo Tax is trying to include another 2555 THIS year, and the error alert required that we answer question #6c on that form - "Have you ever revoked either of the exclusions?".

My guess is that if we had to answer that question, it would be "no," because we haven't revoked anything. However, my main worry is whether or not we even need to submit a 2555 this year. We had zero foreign income - do we still need to submit a 2555 every year unless we revoke the exclusion?

I was hoping this year's taxes would just be simple this time, but I'm concerned about leaving out things that should be in there (or accidentally sending another 2555 when we're not supposed to).

Thanks for any assistance!

[Nich-Nick 3,354]

Sometimes you just have to trick TurboTax into moving on. Things to check--

If it pulled in data from last year, does it know your spouse was resident all year or is it getting info about Canada mixed in. Did you go back through the personal interview?

Did you go through the "Less Common Income" income section/interview to say No for foreign income?

Can you go to the forms view and delete form 2555 from the return. Then what does TurboTax say? I manually delete forms all the time that it spuriously generates.

If those don't help--

Say yes to revoke. If you had actually formally revoked it with a statement to IRS, then you could not use it for five years. However, you are just tricking TurboTax to move on. You don't need the form this year. IRS does not require you to revoke it, nor file it. You can lie to TurboTax because they are not the IRS, and you are doing your return correctly. So saying you revoked to a software program in this case has no actual IRS implications.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Nich-Nick

[WishUsLuck 0]

Sometimes you just have to trick TurboTax into moving on. Things to check--

If it pulled in data from last year, does it know your spouse was resident all year or is it getting info about Canada mixed in. Did you go back through the personal interview?

Did you go through the "Less Common Income" income section/interview to say No for foreign income?

Can you go to the forms view and delete form 2555 from the return. Then what does TurboTax say? I manually delete forms all the time that it spuriously generates.

If those don't help--

Say yes to revoke. If you had actually formally revoked it with a statement to IRS, then you could not use it for five years. However, you are just tricking TurboTax to move on. You don't need the form this year. IRS does not require you to revoke it, nor file it. You can lie to TurboTax because they are not the IRS, and you are doing your return correctly. So saying you revoked to a software program in this case has no actual IRS implications.

It did pull data from last year, which is probably why the 2555 showed up this time. I did go through the interview section and specified no foreign income - that's why it was such a surprise when the extra form showed up at the end.

I'm pretty sure we would be able to just manually delete the form and/or figure out another way to get rid of it; mainly I wanted to make sure we don't actually need it this time. Thanks for the helpful advice!