Compute federal tax owed under the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. Applies bracket stacking.
Federal income tax (with FEIE)
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Excluded under FEIE
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Excluded under FHE
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Your breakdown
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Living abroad and still filing with the IRS
The United States taxes its citizens and green card holders on worldwide income no matter where they live. An American working in Lisbon or Singapore still files a Form 1040 every year. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, claimed on Form 2555, is the main relief: it lets qualifying expats exclude a large chunk of their foreign salary from US income tax. For tax year 2026 this calculator uses an estimated exclusion of $130,000, alongside a Foreign Housing Exclusion for rent and utilities above a base amount that the tool sets at roughly $21,000. The IRS sets the exact figures each year by revenue procedure, so confirm the published number before you file.
What the FEIE does not do is erase your entire tax bill, and that surprises people. It applies only to earned income, meaning wages and self employment, not dividends, interest, capital gains, or rental income. And the income that remains after the exclusion is not taxed at the gentle rates you might expect. That is the bracket stacking rule, which this tool models directly.
Two ways to qualify before you exclude a dollar
Eligibility runs through one of two tests. The Bona Fide Residence Test requires that your tax home is in a foreign country and that you are a genuine resident there for an entire uninterrupted tax year. The Physical Presence Test is more mechanical: you must be physically present in a foreign country or countries for at least 330 full days during any 12 month period. Many expats in their first year abroad rely on the physical presence test because they have not yet completed a full calendar year of foreign residence. Failing both tests means no exclusion, so tracking your days carefully is not optional.
Walking $180,000 of expat income through the rules
Consider a single American abroad earning $180,000, with $30,000 of qualifying foreign housing costs. The calculator first works out what gets excluded, then applies bracket stacking to whatever is left.
After excluding $139,000, only $41,000 of income remains. If that $41,000 were taxed on its own at ordinary graduated rates, the bill would be about $4,682. Instead the rule produces $9,840, more than double. That gap is bracket stacking at work.
Why the leftover income costs more than you would guess
Bracket stacking means your non excluded income is taxed as if the excluded income were sitting underneath it, filling up the low brackets first. So the remaining $41,000 is not taxed starting in the 10% bracket. It is taxed in the 22% and 24% bands, on top of an imaginary $139,000. The calculator implements this exactly as the IRS does: it computes the tax on your full income, computes the tax on the excluded amount alone, and bills you the difference. The chart contrasts the naive expectation with the real result.
What this estimate leaves on the table
This is for US citizens and green card holders working abroad who want a quick read on their federal income tax after the exclusion. A few deliberate simplifications to keep in mind. The tool taxes income net of the exclusions but does not subtract the standard deduction, which would lower the real bill, so treat the output as a conservative upper estimate of income tax. It also ignores self employment tax entirely. The FEIE only shelters you from income tax, so a self employed expat still owes the full 15.3% Social Security and Medicare self employment tax on net earnings, a cost that can dwarf the income tax saving. Finally, the exclusion and housing base are estimates for 2026; verify against the IRS figure for your filing year. For many expats in higher tax countries, the Foreign Tax Credit produces a better result than the FEIE, and the two cannot be stacked on the same income.
If the FEIE wipes out my US tax, do I still have to file?
Yes. The exclusion is not automatic. You claim it by filing Form 2555 with your Form 1040, and if you do not file, the IRS can deny the exclusion entirely and tax your full foreign income. Expats also frequently have separate obligations such as the FBAR for foreign bank accounts over $10,000 and Form 8938 for larger foreign asset holdings.
Can I claim the FEIE and the Foreign Tax Credit together?
Not on the same dollars of income. You can exclude income under the FEIE and separately claim a Foreign Tax Credit on income above the exclusion that was taxed abroad, but you cannot get both benefits on the same income. In a high tax country, running the Foreign Tax Credit alone often beats the exclusion and avoids the bracket stacking penalty.
Does the housing exclusion have an upper limit?
Yes. Beyond the base amount, the housing exclusion is also capped, generally at around 30% of the maximum FEIE, though the IRS publishes higher limits for designated high cost cities like Hong Kong, London, and Geneva. This calculator applies only the base subtraction, so verify the ceiling for your location on the Form 2555 instructions.