Serbinski Accounting Firms

I'm a US citizen living in Canada (and also a Canadian citizen, but that's less relevant) and am currently a member of the Board of Directors for a local (Canadian) charity, which is incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation. I've been asked to take on an officer position on the Board next year ...

Thanks, Nelson. I really appreciate your explanations. Once we apply form 2555, our remaining income is pretty low, and we have two dependents, so in some years we've not owed any US tax, but that has been changing over the past few years.

I am definitely using software. I switched from TurboTax ...

One followup question... is there a more principled way to figure out what portion of our US taxes are attributable to a particular income item other than just calculating what we owe with and without that item included? That doesn't seem like the right way to do it, but i can't think of a better ...

Hi Nelson,

Thank you for your reply. I'm a US citizen (and naturalized Canadian citizen, too, but I think only the resident part matters for taxation). I do have the 2555 and 1116 general, and 1116 passive for Canadian investments. I also have dividends and capital gains from Vanguard. I did not ...

Hi all,

I've tried to find information on this topic elsewhere in the forum, but I haven't been successful in searching for it - apologies if I am asking something that has already been answered.

My husband and I are US citizens living in Canada. We have some Vanguard mutual funds that we ...

Thanks! I found a similar way to force TurboTax to generate the correct 8949, which then populates line 10 of Schedule D. I may try TaxAct next year, but I've already paid for TurboTax this year so I'm glad to not have to switch at this stage.

Does Tax Act let you directly edit any of these forms? (8621, 8949, Schedule D?) Now that I've figured out what I want to do with the numbers, I can't get TurboTax to let me actually do it, and I'm trying to decide if it's worth switching software this late in the game or if there's a workaround ...

Hi again,

I think you are right about Form 8949. I found the following paragraph in the instructions for that form on the IRS website:

"Other gains or losses where sales price or basis is not known. If you have another gain or loss for which you do not know the sales price or basis (such as a long ...

Hi Sunnysga,

Thanks for your reply. I was also looking at form 8949 in between my earlier post and reading this, so I hope that means we're on the right track! I agree with you that as long as the numbers end up on Schedule D and more importantly form 1040 in the right place, it is probably ok.

I ...

My understanding is that the US considers all Canadian RESPs and TFSAs to be "foreign trusts" even though they are not really trusts in most cases. But since the IRS considers them to be, they expect us to file form 3520. Since our Canadian financial institutions do not file 3520a for these non ...

I have another question about the QEF election on form 8621, just in case Sunny or someone else has figured this out. In my current case, the paperwork I got from Fidelity indicates no ordinary earnings (lines 6a/b/c on 8621) but does include capital gains (lines 7a/b/c). The instructions next to ...

Hi Sunnysga,

Thanks very much for your reply and for letting me know what you've learned. What you said you're doing with the form makes as much sense as anything (which is not much, unfortunately!) I guess that as long as we keep filing every year, the offset years will be accounted for in the end ...

Late to the party on this one, but I only realized last week that Fidelity is now providing PFIC annual information statements, and I just got mine in the mail yesterday. I am confused about how to use the information they have provided, though, since it is for the year May 1 2012 - April 30 2013 ...

Thanks, Filo. That's very helpful. I'm relieved to know that term life insurance is not reportable - that's all we have.

[quote="Filo"]OK, 27 views and no replies. I realize that's code for "You have just asked a dumb question." [/quote]

And one more view... so I'll reply as well... I don't think it's a dumb question at all, but I don't know, either. I came across your post while trying to understand whether or not ...