USA CPA Recommendations

Tax and legal
1

Anyone have a good USA CPA willing to work digitally with me? I suspect I could figure out FBAR/FATCA myself with freetaxusa but would like to foist all this stuff on someone else this year.

I’m in NY if that matters for some reason, looking for state + fed filings.

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2

You could reach out to Thun Financial . They specialize in this stuff.

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3

I had an initial consultation with Greenback Tax Services to understand the requirements better. They only do expat taxes and so work digitally. Havent started on it yet but plan to use them for taxes. There are lots of expat tax services out there so better rated than others.

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4

Another potential option is Spott, Lucey & Wall (based in California)—they focus almost exclusively on international tax questions. They’re very experienced and come highly recommended, but also have pricing that matches it. They do, however, offer free introduction calls to evaluate if it’s a good match.

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5

To all friendly folks who replied: are these CPAs familiar with Portugal’s Golden Visa? Also, my understanding is that we need to file:

FBAR (online)
8938
8621

For those who chose the investment fund option. Am I missing something? I just applied for the GV last year and therefore have not received any dividends yet. So, the net tax impact should be zero. I will file an extension to have more time doing this for the first time.

Thank you so much in advance!

6

What accountants did people use? I need some help as I did not include the dividents from my GV fund in my 2021 taxes.

7

I did initial consults with both Creative Planning and Spott, Lucey & Wall.

  • Creative Planning is more of an investment management company and will only provide tax services if they manage assets for you.
  • Spott, Lucey & Wall is definitely premium-priced. They definitely knew their stuff, but the rates were a bit high for my current situation.

I’m going to talk with some of the other expat-focused online tax services to see if they can handle my situation (Portugal GV - Investment, US resident). Does anyone have any suggestions other the Greenback Tax Services? A quick search brought up Online Taxman, Bright Tax, Taxes for Expats, and My Expat Taxes.

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8

A little late now but for next year:

I’ve used Online Taxman for years (please say I referred :slight_smile:

Heard recently about Tytle somewhere, which purports to do multi-country taxes (eg would do both your US and Portugal returns). Seemed to be more expensive of course, but haven’t given it a try yet.

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9

Tytle looks interesting but their prices for US taxes are crazy, starting at 1000 EUR for “low complexity”. I’ve also used Online Taxman and have been satisfied with the results. Pricing was much cheaper (when including PFIC, FBAR, etc) than any other providers I found.

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10

@tizona - did you get a chance to any investigation? Any results you’re willing to share?

11

I ended up going with Taxes for Expats for the past year’s taxes, which turned out okay in the end, albeit not cheap given my tax situation. I ended up with a rep that was pretty knowledgeable with PFIC’s and was able to walk me through the issues with one of my funds statements (never resolved).