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Income Tax

Cloud System Simplifies Form 8621 PFIC Compliance

A new online tool from Expat Tax Tools is aimed at simplifying Form 8621: Information Return by a Shareholder of a Passive Foreign Investment Company or Qualifying Electing Fund. The cloud-based Form 8621 Calculator is designed for smaller companies ...

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A new online tool from Expat Tax Tools is aimed at simplifying Form 8621: Information Return by a Shareholder of a Passive Foreign Investment Company or Qualifying Electing Fund. The cloud-based Form 8621 Calculator is designed for smaller companies and individual preparers.

“According to the IRS, an experienced tax professional can spend more than 24 hours completing a Form 8621 for a U.S. citizen holding a PFIC investment,” says Mary Beth Lougen EA USTCP, Chief Operating Officer, Expat Tax Tools. “We developed Form 8621 Calculator to turn this reporting into a data entry exercise so an accountant or tax professional can focus their time on supporting their clients and not with tedious number crunching.”

Form 8621 Calculator Cloud will be available for $750 USD per user per year and data will be stored on a secured Expat Tax Tools server. Only transactional history is recorded so there is no sensitive client data in the cloud. Accountants and tax professionals will still have the option to purchase a small or large server option and host the data within their offices.

“Form 8621 Calculator was developed by a Master U.S. tax professional and computes all the nuances that are involved with reporting PFICs,” says Lougen. “By bringing the Form 8621 Calculator to the cloud, we can now offer a competitive price for smaller organizations that are preparing U.S. returns for expats.”

Form 8621 must be completed by U.S. citizens and residents who own PFIC investments when they have made a prior election, meet the ownership threshold or have received income.