US tax filing abroad,
adapted to where you live.
The US federal filing system follows the taxpayer, not the address. A US citizen in Copenhagen, Milan or Berlin files on worldwide income the same way a citizen in Chicago does — and usually owes little after the Foreign Tax Credit.
What changes country to country is everything underneath: the accounts you hold, the investment products your bank actually sells you, and how your pension is built. Atamatax layers jurisdiction-specific logic on top of one US filing engine.
Country desks
Local accounts, local products, local pensions — mapped to US forms.
A country desk covers the whole corridor: which local accounts are reportable, which local investment products create Form 8621, how the pension system is analysed, and the catch-up route if you are behind.
Switzerland
- Pillar 3a
- Swissquote
- PFIC
- FBAR
- FATCA
Country desk · treaty desk (1996) · 19 guides
Denmark
- Saxo
- Aktiesparekonto
- Danish pensions
- PFIC
- FBAR
Country desk · treaty desk (1999) · 5 guides
Italy
- Italian funds
- pensions
- Quadro RW
- PFIC
- Streamlined
Country desk · treaty desk (1999) · 4 guides
Germany
- UCITS
- German pensions
- FTC
- PFIC
- FBAR
Country desk · treaty desk (1989) · 5 guides
United Kingdom
- ISA
- SIPP
- UK funds
- PFIC
- FBAR
Country desk · treaty desk (2001) · 5 guides
France
- PEA
- assurance-vie
- PFIC
- NIIT
- FTC
Country desk · treaty desk (1994) · 9 guides
Canada
- RRSP
- TFSA
- RESP
- Form 3520
- FBAR
Country desk · treaty desk (1980) · 14 guides
Australia
- Superannuation
- franking credits
- PFIC
- FBAR
Country desk · treaty desk (1982) · 4 guides
Netherlands
- Box 3
- 30% ruling
- Dutch funds
- PFIC
- FBAR
Country desk · 1 guide
Spain
- Fondos de inversión
- Planes de pensiones
- PFIC
- FBAR
Country desk · 1 guide
Treaty desks
Bilateral treaty workflows, article by article.
A treaty desk is narrower than a country desk on purpose: it covers the convention — dividends, interest, pensions, capital gains, double-taxation relief, and when Form 8833 is genuinely relevant. These countries do not have a full country desk yet.
The four country desks above also have treaty desks: Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia.
Before you read a treaty
What a tax treaty does — and what the saving clause takes back.
Reading a convention for the first time is usually encouraging and usually misleading. The articles allocate taxing rights between two countries, and an American reading them naturally concludes that a pension taxable “only in” the country of residence is not taxable by the United States. Then the saving clause arrives near the end and reserves the United States’ right to tax its own citizens as though the treaty had not been signed.
What a treaty generally does do
- Allocates taxing rights over each type of income — dividends, interest, pensions, capital gains — between the two countries.
- Caps withholding rates at source, which is where a treaty most often produces a directly usable benefit.
- Breaks residence ties when both countries would otherwise claim you as a resident.
- Provides the double-taxation relief article that sits behind the Foreign Tax Credit for that country’s tax.
What it generally does not do for a US citizen
- Remove the obligation to file a US return on worldwide income. Citizenship-based taxation survives the treaty.
- Exempt income the saving clause preserves — which is most income, with specific listed exceptions.
- Touch the FBAR, which is a Bank Secrecy Act report and not a tax matter a tax convention reaches at all.
- Change what a foreign fund is. PFIC status is domestic US law and no treaty article rewrites it.
Finding the article that applies to your income
- Classify the income first — employment, dividend, interest, pension, government service, capital gain. The article follows the classification, and most wrong answers start here.
- Read that article in the convention with the country you live in, using the desk above rather than a summary.
- Read the saving clause and its list of exceptions, because that list is what decides whether the article helps a US citizen at all.
- Check for a later protocol. Article numbers and rates move, and a desk that quotes a signature year is telling you which text to read.
- If you intend to rely on the article to override the Code, establish whether the position requires disclosure on Form 8833 before the return is filed rather than after.
Atamatax cites treaty articles per country in the return workflow and flags where a position would need disclosure; the Form 8833 disclosure and the position itself are routed to a professional for preparation, and the position is yours to take.
What these tiers mean
Not on this page? You can still file.
US federal filing is a function of citizenship, not of the country you live in. Atamatax produces the same draft package for a US person in Lisbon or Seoul as for one in Zurich — Form 1040, the Foreign Tax Credit on Form 1116, FBAR values, Form 8938 thresholds and a Form 8621 for each PFIC.
What a country desk adds is local knowledge: knowing that an Aktiesparekonto is a look-through, that a Pillar 3a is a PFIC trap, that Quadro RW is not the FBAR. What a treaty desk adds is the article map the workflow cites. Where we have neither, the engine still runs on the federal rules, and the jurisdiction-specific layer is scoped with a professional.
Nothing here is individualised tax advice.
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