Turbo Tax and Foreign Tax Credit

[SigmaLa 0]

Hi I am trying to use turbo tax to file jointly.

I am still a NRA but want to be treated as a residential alien. I have a specific question on how to declare my income inside turbo tax. I declare my income from Germany as Foreign Earned Income and Exclusion. But I tell turbo tax not to try to exclude it since I want to use foreign earned income tax credits?

Then I switch to Deductions & Credits and declare my payed taxes in germany.

But it returns me 0$ deduction.

Question: Do I need to declare my income again in Deductions & Credits: Foreign Tax Credit? Or should I only declare my german income in this section and not in Wages & Income: Foreign Earned Income and Exclusion

Hope someone had this problem before, its really confusing. Thanks in advance

[Nich-Nick 3,354]

Try deleting the form 2555. If you have the installed version, you can do View>Forms. Find the two forms for 2555 in the left column. Click one. It becomes visible in the large pane. Find "Delete this form".

Question: did your income remain added to line 7 when you do the same viewing of Form 1040.

If it deleted it, then a work around is go to the W2 section of income and find an area where you can say you have additional income, but did not receive a W2. You basically create a substitute W2 which will put the foreign income in Line 7. Put your gross income and don't put any withholding which would be money held and paid to the IRS. Let the credit section of TurboTax do the foreign tax exclusion.

If you are using the online version, viewing forms is not easy. I can't offer specific help with that.

If you have an installed version and get stuck, I can be more specific when I get home to my computer with TurboTax loaded. Kinda going from memory right now. Ask again if you can't get it sorted.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Nich-Nick