The forms
Form 1040 with the exclusion or the credit, the FBAR, Form 8938, one Form 8621 per PFIC, Form 8833 where a treaty position is in play — each tied to the answer that triggered it.
Free diagnostic · secure case intake
Turn your facts into a reviewable tax case.
This deterministic diagnostic scopes likely forms, years, documents and professional-review flags. Non-willfulness, treaty positions and PFIC elections stay yours to decide, with a professional where the facts call for one.
Before you start
- Starts with no email or account
- Answers stay on this device until you save
- Free — a case scope, not a filing
- About you
- Filing history
- Save your case
- Your situation in detail
Where you live and what ties you to the US. · step 1 of 11
About you
This tells us whether the United States expects a return from you at all.
Answers are saved in this browser as you go.
What you get
A scope a professional can check, line by line
The years
Which tax years are open, and whether the shape is a single return or a catch-up: the most recent 3 years of returns and the most recent 6 years of FBARs under Streamlined, with the non-willfulness question flagged, not answered.
The documents
What to gather for each form — brokerage statements by year, fund documentation for any PFIC, foreign tax paid — and which items are missing, listed as missing.
The review points
The judgements a preparer has to make: treaty positions, elections, residence tests near a threshold. The scope names them so no one has to discover them at signing.
Not sure you need a full case yet? The two-minute risk scanner screens the exposures first; the Tax Map turns them into a filing sequence. Years behind already? The Streamlined preparation workspace coordinates the returns and FBARs before you file.
What the diagnostic decides, and what stays yours
- What does the diagnostic produce?#
- A case scope: the forms your facts point to (Form 1040 with 2555 or 1116, FBAR, Form 8938, Form 8621 per PFIC, treaty positions on Form 8833), the years involved — including whether a catch-up looks like the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures' the most recent 3 years of returns and the most recent 6 years of FBARs — the documents each form needs, and the points a professional has to review before anything is filed.
- How is this different from the risk scanner?#
- The scanner is a two-minute screen that tells you which exposures exist. The diagnostic is the intake behind a real case: it asks for the facts a preparer would ask for, keeps them on your device until you choose to save, and turns them into a scoped, priced plan you can act on or hand to a CPA.
- What does it refuse to decide?#
- Non-willfulness, treaty positions and PFIC elections. Each is a judgement with lasting consequences, and the diagnostic flags them for review instead of picking for you. It also never invents a document it has not seen: a missing statement is listed as missing.
- Is it deterministic?#
- Yes. The same answers always produce the same scope, because the rules are coded thresholds and form triggers, not a model guessing. That is what makes the scope reviewable: a professional can trace every form on it back to the answer that put it there.