Gulliver wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 2:12 pm...
I don’t know… I completed an accurate US tax return for last year in about a 1/2 hour sitting at home in my pajamas. This included multiple investments and foreign income/asset reporting. I used one of the major US e-filing programs.
This, as opposed to my Japanese tax return with which I had to waste several days gathering documents, speaking with multiple specialists and paying for annoying crowded transportation to far-flung offices and restaurants. (and in the end, I was still not feeling 100% certain I was getting all of the deductions due and reporting done correctly).
...
I do pay for a US software package, and the reason is that it connects directly to my broker, and all the year-end tax stuff flows in to the right places in about 10 seconds. On the other hand, it does seem a little odd that I have to repeat that, since all of it has already been forwarded to the IRS...
For people with US/foreign accounts, it does take more work, but keep in mind that for domestic filers (people with japan-domiciled investments only,) the great majority of those don't even need to put that on their tax returns--the brokers deal with all that and the customer/investor doesn't have to do or think about anything. ((Another POV would be that the filing difficulty here for US people is due to the US's quirks--that it's the US, thru a bunch of disincentives, that doesn't allow you to invest like a normal person here. That is, the US has created the situation, not japan. So, place blame where it is due...?
))
The best strategy for reporting US trades and any distributions/interest here is to have a couple spreadsheets set so you can update them thru the year. I do trades (sale) within a couple days of the sale, and adding right then when it's fresh in mind is the perfect time to do that. I do dividends and interest 3-4 times during the year, so that come late January, I only have to update the last month or two (e.g., November/December) and it's done. Any trades for 2023 I have already done up to the present.
Especially for any trades, where the basis and proceeds as converted to yen can sometimes be 'surprising', keeping this up to date can help in planning, since you then already know your passive income to date (divs/interest), and, versus the US, whether you have yen-based gains/losses. This also helps some with planning what to sell and when--and whether you want to be taking gains due to yen depreciation, or not. And doing these updates several times thru the year means that you won't waste days gathering documents.
I'm not sure what specialists you're talking about. After a few years of doing this, to me it seems pretty straightforward.
