# US SS and capital gains - US and Spain



## RoyalBlue (Apr 10, 2016)

This is an old thread but I am hoping that someone is watching and can help
My situation is that I am a US resident of Spain, and have not yet started Social Security disbursements. But this year I made a contribution into SS. The tax service I am using has indicated that payments into a foreign pension used to be used as a reduction of income, but this is no longer the case. I am wondering how true this is

Another tax question is how capital LOSSES are handled. I have some losses which I did not report in a prior tax year (2016). I would like to submit an amended form, but again my tax service has said Spain only taxes GAINS, but does not allow LOSSES to be used to reduce taxes. This doesn't sound right
Thanks and regards


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Have moved you into a thread of your own to try to flag down a bit more help on this.

Basically, the answers to both of your issues should be found somewhere within the US-Spanish tax treaty. I'm not familiar with that one, but I can tell you that most of the tax treaties with the US do differentiate between payments made to "private" pensions and those made to "government" pensions. US SS is considered a "government" pension and usually is treated in a parallel manner to whatever government pension system there is in the other country (i.e. Spain in your case). 

As a US citizen you've obviously got both the US tax side of things and the Spanish side to consider. It's not uncommon for tax services to allow the taking of capital losses only against capital gains, not against regular income. In any event your first resource probably needs to be the US-Spanish tax treaty. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/spain.pdf
Cheers,
Bev


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