# American late tax filing questions



## salminbel28 (Mar 6, 2021)

I have some questions regarding filing taxes in the US after living abroad in New Zealand for 3.5 years. First some context. I am a US citizen and I lived in New Zealand from August 2014 to April 2018. I've now moved back to the US for graduate school. During that time I worked at a New Zealand company and earned the equivalent of ~$32000 USD per year. I paid New Zealand taxes and received New Zealand tax returns. While I was there, I received advice that there was no need for me to file US taxes because I was under the threshold for foreign earned income tax. Someone more recently told me that I should have filed, and that I should back file all of my taxes for the time I was in New Zealand.
My question now is should I back file my US taxes for 2015, 2016, and 2017? I was in New Zealand for more than 330 days those years. I filed my taxes for 2014 and 2018 in both the US and NZ.
A follow up question is how would I go about filing that information? I can get access to my NZ pay stubs and I have access to NZ bank accounts. I had no income in the US during those years so I don't have any W-2. I changed my US bank accounts in 2016 and I don't have my 1099 forms from my previous banks to report interest (it would have been under $100).
Thanks for your time! Any advice is appreciated.


----------



## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Honestly, I wouldn't bother trying to back file all the way to 2014 - especially if you didn't owe any taxes. If you were to go the Streamlined Compliance route, you only need file current year (2020) plus three years in arrears and it appears you already filed 2018 and 2019.

Besides, the penalty for late filing is a % of the amount of taxes owed - which if you owed nothing means that the penalty is going to be $0 anyhow. 

Just for reference, you will never have any W-2s nor any 1099s for foreign source income. Basically they just have to take your word for whatever you declare.


----------



## Nononymous (Jul 12, 2011)

Doing so would be a complete waste of your time, paper, ink and postage stamps.


----------

