Today was the first day off for Korean Thanksgiving. We didn’t go anywhere, so I had the day to do something I had been putting off since my trip back to the United States: My Taxes. While I was in the United States I visited my family’s accountant. My father went with me, as he handles the family’s filing and I needed all the help I could get to catch up on a few years of filing since I’ve come to Korea. The United States requires citizens to file tax forms even if they didn’t work or live in the country the entire year.
The family accountant gave us a list of information he thought he would need. When we returned to Korea we tried to collect as much as possible. We had a few trips to the tax office, called old employers, argued with people about getting paperwork and documentation. It’s a huge hassle. If I didn’t have a native speaker to get in touch with all the people I needed, this would have been an impossible task.
Working on all the results for submitting it to my family’s accounant today, I found out how little I made in the past few years in American dollars (living costs and the Korean tax system balance this out). It was also sobering to realize that half my bosses were probably crooks, or at least tax cheats. Let’s call them "Creative Accountants" to be civil about it.
After about three hours of calculations and lots of documentation, I had prepared something I felt would be of some use to my family’s accountant.
For anyone wondering what they might (*) have to do to file American taxes:
1. Find out the months you were employed in Korea.
2. Find out your employer’s name and address.
3. Have Contracts or Bank records of your salary transactions. Something official looking to prove your salary.
4. Find out the Average Exchange Rate of the Won for the dollar. I was told a yearly average exchange rate number would be enough.
5. Any tax papers you can prepare proving you paid Korean taxes might help. Expect this to be impossible as a good majority of Korean school owners do not file taxes, understate them, or keep no records of previous employees.
6. Create a summary of your taxable income and make all statements in American Dollars (after accounting for the exchange rate for the year in question)
7. Hope that everything above is enough and that your salary is low enough to get a tax exclusion.
*Warning, I am not an accountant, this is simply advice given to me that I am parroting on to help anyone in a similar situation that has no clue where to begin.**
** Your mileage may vary.***
*** Offer not valid in Tennesee, Alaska or Hawaii. ****
**** Do not Pass Go. *****
*****You sank my battleship! ******
****** Yahtzee!
