Larry's 2013 Tax Guide for U.S. Expats & Green Card Holders in User-Friendly English. Laurence E. 'Larry'
LARRY’S 2013 TAX GUIDE FOR THE
U.S. EXPAT AND GREEN CARD HOLDER – IN USER-FRIENDLY ENGLISH!
By
Asian Tax Review’s
Laurence E. ‘Larry’ Lipsher
Copyright 2013 by prctaxman.corp, # 7-F, The Garley Building, 53 Graham Street, Central, Hong Kong
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1324-2
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Please note: This book was started on 7 November 2012 and was completed on 9 February 2013. It is, though, an ongoing ‘work in process’ as laws and regulations are continually changing. You just might find out some of those up-to-date changes by looking at our website ( a new one, now – after a half-decade, it’s time for new version!: www.lifeilao.com). We openly admit that we don’t update the site as often as we wish we could but our intentions are good and we do make changes, at least, on a monthly basis – including our blog! NOTE: The first U.S. tax act of 2013 was passed on 1 January 2013 but called a 2012 tax act – There is a section within this book about it.
Also written by Larry Lipsher: ‘The Tax Analects of Li Fei Lao’ (2009) – it’s still a great book! & ‘Larry’s 2011 & 2012 Tax Guides for the U.S. Expat and Green Card Holder – In User-Friendly English!’
Li Fei Lao comes first…..now who is he?
Hey, we have not seen either Li Fei Lao or his Sancho Panza side kick, Xiao Go Pi, for a while but they are soon to make their re-appearance, looking exactly like they did, the first time around. That first time, in The Tax Analects of Li Fei Lao, these two cartoon characters were an absolute hit in China, where autographed cartoons were actually in demand! Yet the knee-jerk reaction in the United States was that depicting Chinese characters like this was insensitive and politically incorrect. Well it took the ‘artist’ (and I use that term very, very loosely!) a couple of years to get over this criticism. Face it, Lipsher, the artist, is too thin skinned! Well we’re all over that – if the cartoons are well received in China, then that’s really all that matters and that thin-skinned, erstwhile artist is cartooning, once again – so look at the website* as cartoons will be there, first! Anyhow…..
Li Fei Lao – Fat Old Li, is the cartoon avatar of tax columnist Laurence E. ‘Larry’ Lipsher. Li was first introduced to the world at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong during Larry’s second annual stand-up comic tax routine at the FCC. These luncheons fill up the house, proving that there is much annual concern by US expats about what they believe their government is doing to them. Larry’s 2013 performance at the FCC will be the fifth year in a row that Li Fei Lao will adorn the Power Point presentation that Larry makes throughout Asia’s major cities because, frankly, while it might be a funny book that you are now starting to read, it does require patience, guts, stamina and determination to read a book about taxes, no matter how funny it is. It is far, far easier to be ‘spoon fed’ in a stand up comedic/entertaining session! Li, venerable sage or lecherous lout – that’s for you, the reader to decide, made his literary debut in that critically acclaimed and still very much up-to-date 2009 printing of ‘The Tax Analects of Li Fei Lao’. While Li and his semi-dimwitted sidekick, Xiao Go Pi do not adorn the pages of this book, they will make their appearances again, soon, so look for this gala re-appearance! both on the website and, as usual in the Power Point slides so very much essential for 2013 updates regarding U.S. taxes. They are both very much a part of Lipsher’s ‘off the wall’ approach to entertaining exasperated American taxpayers about the ever changing nuances of U.S. tax law that ALL U.S. tax filers must be aware of.
So just who is Li? Li Fei Lao is a very mediocre Tang Dynasty poet and horrid jazz harmonica player who has blown that chromatic harp throughout the world, sometimes making it extremely painful to be within listening range! Li became a master of the universe through specializing in the sub-prime rice futures distribution market, which, after the crash of 2008, developed into an obscenely profitable agricultural hedge fund that, frankly, is thriving in a period of Chinese inflation, while the rest of the world suffers through an economic malaise that would never have made it to a movie screenplay prior to 2008 because it is so very bizarre. Li has also developed some rather unsavory sidelines, such as illegally subdividing below standard Hong Kong flats into outrageously overpriced rental cages. Is it wrong? Is it immoral? Of course it is….but it is ‘so Hong Kong……!’
Obviously, fiction and reality run their separate paths here, because if Larry Lipsher had become that proverbial ‘King of the World’ in some agricultural hedge fund – or any hedge fund, for that matter (or if he became a cold hearted, avaricious slum lord – he would not have bothered to masochistically attempt to write a user-friendly overview of what the U.S. expat and green card holder has to be aware of for the coming year, a year guaranteed to be even more onerous based on actions of the IRS towards those obligated to file who happen to reside outside of the United States. Alas, dear readers, the IRS wants more and more and more from you. To the fullest extent possible, this book is written to provide you with what we believe is all you really need to know as an overview of how you must interface, on an annual basis, with the U.S. government.
* Long ago and far, far away, when few had them, Li Fei Lao had a website. The fourth iteration of that site in now being developed and will soon debut, along with this book!
Hey, it is far from being the whole enchilada (and much, much more than adding chili relano to the plate!). Yet please remember that while this is an overview, you are legally responsible to understand, if for no other reason than saving yourself from ‘willful neglect’ and the penalties – costly, of course – that the IRS will assess for willful neglect. We ask you to do something different, something you have likely never done before when matters of tax are concerned: read this book for fun! No, I am not out of my mind – I have tried to be as funny and cynical as I can possibly be – ONLY because I want you to have fun reading this!
Don’t read the whole book if you are not interested – simply read the sections that you feel are applicable to your situation. If you want to read the whole thing, from start to finish – hey, it’s not really that long and you might actually enjoy it!
AND…….I dare you to access the forms included at the end off of the IRS website – follow our URLs and you’ll get the forms. Try it on your own and you’re in for trouble, as there’s so much on the IRS site that it is either too intimidating or too impossible to navigate – And look at the forms and instructions included here, too – these might be very, very helpful for you!
Now, who the hell is Larry Lipsher?
Laurence E. ‘Larry’ Lipsher is an American CPA who has been doing U.S. tax returns for the past 46 years. While he proudly states that over the past four plus decades on the job, he has yet to develop serious brain damage from a life of tax work, those around him seriously wonder. Lipsher has worked in Asia for a quarter of a century, living for 23 of those years, since 1990, in China.
Lipsher, a past president of the American Chamber of Commerce of South China, has, for the past eleven years been writing the bi-weekly Asian Tax Review for World Wide Tax Daily of Tax Analysts, Washington, DC. He has been featured on CCTV (China Central Television) World Wide Watch, the most widely viewed evening television news program in the world. He has also appeared on both CNN and CNBC. Lipsher specializes in tax issues involving nine tax jurisdictions within Asia as well as U.S. tax matters – particularly as they apply to U.S. tax filers living and