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| Here is my theory, can you tell me if I'm correct?
If I take the foreign earned income exclusion, I lose the ability for tax credit on this excluded income. If my swiss taxes are higher than expected US taxes, I'm loosing...
If I'm going to take the tax credit, I don't need to worry about 330 days.
Also, do you know what parts of the withholding here is considered tax? Is the social security equivalent here is a tax? | |
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Right, if you don't care about the foreign income exclusion (FIE), then there's no need to satisfy the 330 day rule.
You are also correct to say that amounts excluded under the FIE don't qualify for the foreign tax credit.
If your Swiss taxes are higher than your US taxes, then you won't have to pay the US anything because your credit will be larger than your US tax burden (but from what I understand US taxes are almost always higher than Swiss taxes). You have excess credits in this situation and I believe you can actually carry these credits back or forward to other years in which you may have paid (or will pay) more US taxes than Swiss taxes.
I'm not too sure about what exactly is considered a Swiss tax, but I'll go with what holliday just said.