Get High Tax Kickout 1116

Single filers who paid $300 or less in foreign taxes, and married joint filers who paid $600 or less, can omit filing Form 1116. But using the form enables you to carry forward any unused credit balance to future tax years; without filing Form 1116, you give up this carryover tax break.

HTKO (High-Tax Kick Out) & Foreign Tax Credits When a Taxpayer wants to claim a Foreign Tax Credit, they use IRS Form 1116 to claim the credit. For example, Marissa earns $24,000 USD equivalent of foreign interest income and she paid $6,000 of tax overseas. Marissa will file a Form 1116 to claim the Foreign Tax Credit.

HTKO is the result of paying too high of a tax rate on the Foreign Taxes. In other words, the IRS wants to prevent any artificial reduction of the tax liability in the U.S. (especially when there are multiple foreign tax credits being applied from different countries, that each have different tax rates).

Your qualified foreign taxes for the year are not more than $300 USD ($600 USD dollars if you're filing a joint return) All of your gross foreign income and foreign taxes are reported to you on a payee statement such as a Form 1099-DIV or 1099-INT, and then you elect this procedure for the tax year.

The IRS limits the foreign tax credit you can claim to the lesser of the amount of foreign taxes paid or the U.S. tax liability on the foreign income. For example, if you paid $350 of foreign taxes and owed $250 of U.S. taxes on that same income, your tax credit will be limited to $250.

You can claim a credit only for foreign taxes that are imposed on you by a foreign country or U.S. possession. Generally, only income, war profits and excess profits taxes qualify for the credit.

The letters HTKO on Form 1116, stand for High-Tax Kickout. When the effective tax rate for foreign passive category income exceeds the greatest U.S. rate, the income is considered high-taxed income and is combined with the general limitation category basket.