Tax time

I’ll do another real post soon, but here’s some fun info on taxes.

As a US citizen, you always have to file a tax return, no matter how much you earn or where you earn it.  It’s pretty much the same as filing it when you live in the US but with a few differences. We pay income tax to NZ for our income here of course.  But we also pay taxes to the US on our income earned in NZ.  The first $115k or so is excluded so we’re in the clear, but anything over that would be taxed by both countries. One additional thing you do have to do when living overseas is to file a FUBAR, I mean FBAR.  Somehow that stands for Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts and is intended to help combat terrorism financing and other crimes. It’s a short form that just asks if you have any foreign bank accounts over a certain amount, and the maximum amount that was in them last year. But if you forget to file it, the penalties can be pretty steep.

So that’s all there is to filing your US tax return.  The NZ tax year ends 31 March, so I’ll talk a litte about that too soon.

Other than that, we’re moving into autumn now.  It was a short and cool summer, the worst since 1985 according to the Met Service.  The last few weeks have seen some really nice warm and dry spells though, and even though the days are getting shorter and a little cooler, we’ve had more sun that rain lately (and not much wind) which has been nice. And here’s a sunset pic I took from across the street.