If I Live In Another Country?
You can run ESPlanner turning off U.S. taxes, Social Security benefits, and Medicare premiums. You simply specify that you live in any state in the U.S. and then go to the tax and benefits assumptions screen and specify that starting in the current year federal and state payroll and income taxes as well as Social Security benefits will be cut by 100 percent. You also tell the program that you will not enroll in Medicare (You do this on the Medicare screen under Social Security.)
Having done this, you need to enter the government pension you expect to receive from your country. You can enter this pension in the pensions and annuities folder.
You also need to enter your future projected tax payments as special receipts. Alternatively, you can enter your earnings and rate of return net of taxes.
RSS
Suggestions for the following US/Canada expatriate situations:
1. Americans in Canada
- Disable the US tax calculations by reducing US taxes and Social Security taxes by 100%
- If you are entitled to CPP benefits, enter CPP as a pension NOT covered by Social Security employment. This will allow you to take advantage of ESPlanner's Social Security calculation engine to determine any Social Security benefit you are eligible to receive less the Windfall Elimination Provision for CPP. Index CPP fully to inflation.
- If you are entitled to OAS, enter OAS as an annuity indexed fully to inflation.
- Run the ESPlanner reports with no Canadian taxes. Copy the non-asset income and retirement account withdrawals for each person from the spreadsheet and apply Canadian taxes to it at regular rates. Copy the regular asset income from the spreadsheet and apply a rate appropriate for your asset mix (interest, dividend and capital gains... here I am conservative and use the tax rate for interest, since it is the highest). You may want to tax only 85% of your Social Security benefits at this point (I don't since I want easier calculations). Finally, take the Canadian tax amount you calculated for each year and put it into ESPlanner as special expenditures. Run the ESPlanner reports to get your results including Canadian taxes.
2. Canadians in the US
- Enter CPP benefits as described above.
- Enter OAS benefits as described above.
- Let ESPlanner calculate your US taxes and social security benefits. The Social Security calculation engine will take into account your CPP benefit and adjust for the Windfall Elimination Provision.
I am interested in any advice expatriates have in using ESPlanner.