# Can Americans Abroad e-File their US taxes?



## MyExpatTaxes (10 mo ago)

"Expats cannot e-file their US taxes." It is a common myth that Americans living abroad cannot e-file their US taxes. As a matter of fact, they most definitely can AND we are going to share how to do that in this blog post!


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## Moulard (Feb 3, 2017)

Its not a myth, its a legend as there is definitely an element of truth to it

Your blog post fails to highlight the current hurdles that can make it extremely difficult for a US Person living abroad from efiling....

Lets start with Free-Fillable Forms - the IRS Go-To for free efiling for those inelligible to free file.

For starters you cannot even create an account without having a US phone number. Even if you can, then Without a U.S. phone number, you may not be able to access or recover your account. 

So you still First you cannot use it if you are required to attach a statement to the form... this is required for two of the most commonly used forms by a US person abroad.

Form 1116 – Foreign Tax Credit 
Form 2555 – Foreign Earned Income
Then lets move on to having a foreign address...

Many forms require you to complete a domestic address to name a few Form 8863, Form 2441 and Schedule C. 

The IRS admits that it does not have a universal work around for the issue.


OK, so you give up on that and decide to go to a Free File Consortium member and wear what ever cost they impose.

First you are going to hit the requirement of a US Phone number, as the only supported method of two factor authentication. I understand the they may not want to pay the carrier costs associated with international calls or SMS. There are a host of other 2FA mechanisms out there that could have been implemented in addition to a US phone number. 

Got passed that hurdle, were able to create an account, and complete your return and get to the point of "check out" then you probably won't be able to pay any filing fee as I am not aware of any provider that will actually allow you to use a foreign credit card to make a payment. The response is always that it is a security risk, which is either an indication that they are mixing tax data with payments data, or that they have a really poor understanding of the risk related to payments fraud in a context like this

I could go on but these are the sorts of issues that perpetuate the myth..

The time and effort to get around the hurdles makes it simply easier to go the paper route thus perpetuating it.


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## Jon781 (3 mo ago)

Freefilefillableforms.com has been blocked in our region (The Netherlands) for a couple of weeks now. Managed to file an extension in June just fine, using an email address as authentication method. When I try to contact the IRS I get brushed off (the equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and on again”).


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