A Tale of Two Taxes

If you are a resident of a foreign country, and your taxes are deducted from your paycheck (a fat percentage, may I add)! You might expect not to have to pay income tax in your original country. This would be true for all but two nations on the globe. Yep, you guessed it... one of the stingy two is the good ol' US of A.

I've been wading through the international tax laws during my lunch break, and I am about to bang my head against a wall. OK. I *think*, if you live in a foreign country and make less than 80,000 dollars a year, you don't have to pay american income tax. (no problem there!). I checked the irs site, and here's what they have to say...

"To claim the foreign earned income exclusion, the foreign housing exclusion, or the foreign housing deduction, you must satisfy all three of the following requirements.

1.Your tax home must be in a foreign country.

Ok, so far so good. Just let me check out what a "tax home" is real quick.

"You are not considered to have a tax home in a foreign country for any period in which your abode is in the United States. However, your abode is not necessarily in the United States while you are temporarily in the United States. Your abode is also not necessarily in the United States merely because you maintain a dwelling in the United States, whether or not your spouse or dependents use the dwelling."

...?

Ok, I must admit, I've been playing the "Brain Age" game on the nintendo DS, and it says I'm a ripe old 57. So I'm not exactly the sharpest crayon in the box. But... WTF?

Perhaps they have a form 1042SUPEREEEZZZFORYOUSTUPID form I can fill out? Because right now I just want to figure out how much I will be gouged for and cry with patriotic pride into my Asahi beer.