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Ask HN: As a foreigner in the US, how do you find filing taxes here?

by blackhaj7 on 5/16/25, 2:19 PM with 9 comments

I am from the UK but living in the US and filing taxes has been a complete disaster.

The issue mainly stems from bad tax accountants and the fact that I have investment accounts in the UK where the tax year is different so collating the info for the US tax year is harder. I have lived in other countries and it has never been a problem.

The accountants I have had here have been completely unable to read basic investment account data. They have fabricated numbers out of thin air, repeatedly made the same mistakes over and over.

Despite paying them to do it, I ended up manually doing all the calculations and writing a script to work out my income/divs/gains in the format they need and they still managed to copy/paste the data incorrectly.

Have you had a similar experience?

  • by mickelsen on 5/24/25, 6:03 AM

    Yeah, I know someone who had a similar experience. When he moved to the US, his employer (McAfee) offered to cover a big tax firm for his filing as part of the relocation package (same employer, just a country transfer). Pretty sure it was PwC. You’d think that would guarantee a smooth process, but according to him, they did a really poor job.

    The proposal they put together missed several deductions he qualified for, ignored a lot of info he had sent, and was full of basic mistakes.

    In the end, he scrapped their work and filed everything himself. I asked if the IRS ever came back to him about it... so far, no issues.

  • by duxup on 5/16/25, 2:34 PM

    Are you talking about personal taxes or a business? both?

    You should be able to find a CPA who can help you with a business, and a capable person to help with tax planning for personal taxes.

    Taxes in the US aren't as simple as some places, but I've never had a problem finding competent help for more complex situations. Just make sure you're finding someone with experience with your situation(s).

  • by jgneff on 5/16/25, 2:59 PM

    Yes, I have had a similar experience. I eventually gave up on finding a competent cross-border tax accountant and just learned it all myself. I would rather make my own mistakes than pay someone quite a bit of money to make even more mistakes. It took a lot of reading and research, and I needed to make my finances as simple as possible, but so far so good in the past 15 years.

  • by jjice on 5/16/25, 2:45 PM

    > The accountants I have had here have been completely unable to read basic investment account data. They have fabricated numbers out of thin air, repeatedly made the same mistakes over and over.

    Were these independent accountants and not something like an HR Block? If so, I guess I'd look for recommendations and calling them ahead of time to see if they have experience with UK x US taxes. Unfortunate if that's been the case you've seen.

    If it was something like a chain service, I've heard nothing but awful things about how they're essentially a keyboard proxy for entering your taxes into software without any understanding.

  • by r_thambapillai on 5/16/25, 3:05 PM

    It is extremely dreadful