№ 01
The math crosses borders
A single return can carry income in several currencies, converted at different rates, with tax already paid to another government. The spreadsheet usually gives up around the third K-1 from a foreign trust.
Pillar · Expat tax firms
Expat tax software for CPAs who file expat tax returns.
An expat return isn’t a 1040 with a couple of extra forms. It’s a different kind of practice, with its own deadlines, its own penalties and clients who expect you to know what a Lohnsteuerbescheinigung is. We built TaxSQR at a firm that files thousands of these every season, for firms that file enough of them to need software that treats them properly.
§ Section I · The work
Why expat returns eat your hours.
Every firm that takes on expat clients hits the same walls.
№ 02
Nobody’s in the same time zone
Your client is in Singapore, the preparer is in London and the reviewer is in New York. If the work only moves when everyone’s on a call, it doesn’t move.
№ 03
The documents aren’t W-2s
A Japanese gensen-choshu-hyo, a German Lohnsteuerbescheinigung, a UK P60. Everything you need is on them. Getting it off them is the slow part.
№ 04
Streamlined is its own project
Three returns and six FBARs at once, plus a non-willful certification that has to hold up, doesn’t fit a normal 1040 workflow. So we built one for it.
§ Section II · Forms
Every expat form has its own workflow.
Most practice software treats Form 2555 as an attachment to a domestic return. We don’t. Each expat form carries its own currency math and year-to-year carryover, and the organizer asks the client for what it needs in English, Spanish or Japanese.
AI extract on expat 1040s →№ 01
Form 2555 — FEIE
The exclusion, with both the bona fide residence and physical presence tests worked through. Whatever was excluded carries into next year’s prefill, so the second year starts from the first.
FEIE
№ 02
Form 1116 — FTC
Foreign tax credits with the currency conversion done for you. General, passive and GILTI baskets are kept apart, because that’s where hand-built workpapers usually go wrong.
FTC
№ 03
FBAR — FinCEN 114
Filed from the portal. Last year’s account list carries forward, and the taxpayer is asked for maximum balances in their own language, not in an email thread you have to chase.
FinCEN 114
№ 04
Form 8938 — FATCA
Reported once the thresholds are crossed. If last year’s figures already went over, the return is flagged before anyone has to remember.
FATCA
№ 05
Form 8621 — PFIC
For the foreign mutual funds and trusts that clients often don’t realise they own. This is the form that turns a simple expat return into a long one.
PFIC
№ 06
Streamlined Filing
Domestic or Foreign Offshore. Three years of returns and six FBARs run as one job, not nine separate ones.
SFOP · SDOP
§ Section III · Software + Services
Software for your team, EAs for the overflow.
Use the platform yourself, send us the returns, or do some of each.
№ 01
An organizer built for foreign income
22 sections, with currency conversion and fields for more than one country. Clients can switch it to English, Spanish or Japanese, and it saves as they type, so a half-finished organizer isn’t lost.
№ 02
The expat forms are built in
2555, 1116, the FBAR, 8938, 8621 and Streamlined each have their own workflow. None of them is a generic task someone bolted on later.
№ 03
Our EAs take the hard ones
When a return is past what your team wants to touch, or it’s 30 March and the pile isn’t shrinking, send it to our enrolled agents. They prepare it on the same TaxSQR you license. Our Expat tier is $275 a return.
№ 04
Clients can’t see each other
Your engineer in Singapore and your VC partner in Hong Kong sit in the same database. Neither of them can ever open the other’s file.
§ Section IV · Provenance
Built by a firm that files them.
Our own EA desk prepares thousands of expat returns every season, on TaxSQR. When one of our preparers hits an awkward case, like a client with income in three countries, it turns into a product ticket. You license the same platform we use every day.
And if you’d rather hand a return to our enrolled agents than draft it yourself, you can. It sits in the same portal with the same audit log. The only thing that changes is whose initials are on the engagement letter.
№ 01
Enrolled agents
Sign every return.
USA
№ 02
Chartered Accountants
Prepare and reconcile.
Prep
№ 03
Tax returns staffed last season
Thousands, all on this platform.
Dogfood
№ 04
Same SSE-KMS vault
No separate copy held.
SSE-KMS
TaxSQR makes sense if expat returns aren’t the odd one out in your firm. If they’re the work.
— The TaxSQR Desk · NAEA 2026