2555 number of days in country calculation

[Drphibes]

Taxpayer been living/working in Singapore for 4 years without leaving the country and then left on March 16th 2022 to return to live in the US.  That is a total of 74 days in-country for the income exclusion proration for 2022.  However, the program is calculating 100 days in-country on line 31.  The dates are correctly entered.  Any clue why this is?  Thanks in advance.

[itonewbie]

Are you sure you did not enter any US travel between 3/16/21 to 12/31/21?

I find that Lacerte/ProConnect Tax is not always spot on with physical presence test calculations and would often need some help.

Your idea of 74 days is based on bona fide residence test but it's not optimal for most people in the years of arrival and departure.

[rbynaker · Accepted solution]

I learned this because ProSeries does NOT optimize the time window for you so I always had to do it manually.  At least Lacerte takes a stab at it (which may create a false sense of security).

You need a window of time with at least 330 qualifying days out of the US.  Most years the best result means exactly 35 days in the US.  So if there were no trips in 2021 or early 2022 I would expect the optimal window to run until April 19th 2022, or 109 days in calendar year 2022 (-1 day if there's a date-line variance--i.e. left Singapore on 3/16 but arrived in US on 3/15!)

But if there were earlier trips to the US in that 365-day window, they essentially shorten the end of the window because they've already been "used" so you can't tack them onto the end.  My guess would be the same as Jensen's, there were a few days (9?) in the US earlier in the window causing it to only extend to 100 days in 2022.  But I just pretend to know what I'm talking about, @itonewbie is our resident expert. 🙂

Rick

[sjrcpa]

"the program is calculating 100 days in-country on line 31."

It's not saying the 100 days are in country. It's saying 100 days in 2022 will be used for the 330 out of 365 days calculation. As Rick explained, it's trying to optimize the exclusion for 2022.