# Paying Social Security taxes for American expats



## TallyHo (Aug 21, 2011)

One of my juniors is an American citizen who wants the company (the UAE branch of a large US based company) to resume paying social security taxes via deductions from his salary. The following is a link to the IRS website about Form 2032, which seems to cover this issue

https://www.irs.gov/uac/about-form-2032

This link also has some information about how American companies qualify for this voluntary arrangement to make social security contributions:

http://taxmap.ntis.gov/taxmap/pubs/p54-007.htm

We are receiving conflicting information from various people. Some are saying that this voluntary social security contributions via Form 2032 has to apply to all employees of the company working overseas and cannot be filed for just one employee. Is this true? 

Alternatively, are there any ways an American expat working overseas who's already electing to use the foreign earned income exclusion to voluntarily contribute to his/her social security?


----------



## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Since you are a branch of a "large US company" I suppose you have the choice whether or not to cover all your US employees for US Social Security. But as far as I know, this is one of those "all or nothing" provisions. It's not on an individual basis. What I suspect will happen is that you'll be issued a US employer id number and expected to file all the usual quarterly filing documents.

I would go slowly on this if you have other US employees or are likely to have US employees in the future.
Cheers,
Bev


----------



## TallyHo (Aug 21, 2011)

Thank you, Bev. In that case it's unlikely that we'll be able to help him out as the "all or nothing" won't work for us as we won't enforce it on other Americans working overseas. 

Just to query, is it at all possible for an US expat to make voluntary contributions to his social security account even after applying the foreign exclusion deductible?


----------



## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

TallyHo said:


> Just to query, is it at all possible for an US expat to make voluntary contributions to his social security account even after applying the foreign exclusion deductible?


It's not supposed to be - but I'll bet the Social Security Administration won't refuse the payments. (It would involve paying the "self employment tax" rather than the regular social security "employee contribution" - basically twice the employee contribution, since as a self-employed individual, the taxpayer is responsible for both parts of the contribution.)
Cheers,
Bev


----------

