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Everything you need to help you launch your new business entity from business entity selection to multiple-entity business structures.
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Everything you need to help you launch your new business entity from business entity selection to multiple-entity business structures.
Designed for rental property owners where WCG CPAs & Advisors supports you as your real estate CPA.
Everything you need from tax return preparation for your small business to your rental to your corporation is here.
WCG’s primary objective is to help you to feel comfortable about engaging with us
Table Of Contents
By Jason Watson, CPA
Posted Monday, December 30, 2024
For our small business owners or contractors working overseas, there is a consideration when it comes to tax deferred retirement planning. Currently the amount of foreign earned income that can be excluded from ordinary income tax is $130,000 (for the 2025 tax year). Therefore, if you qualify as an expat and your income is less than $130,000 all your income is excluded.
Fast forward, if you elect to defer some of your earnings into a tax deferred retirement account you might be creating a tax liability unnecessarily. In other words, if your income was already being excluded from income tax, why put money into a tax deferred retirement account just to pay tax on the money later when that money was never supposed to be taxed in the first place. Huh? Stay with us.
You make $130,000. You pay $0 in taxes. You put $7,000 in a normal trading account. This $7,000 was never taxed and never will be. You make $10,000 on it because you’re smart. You sell the investments and recognize a $10,000 taxable gain all at capital gains rates.
Same situation, but with an IRA-
You make $130,000. You pay $0 in taxes. You put $7,000 (for the 2025 tax year) in an IRA. This $7,000 is not taxed. You make $10,000 on it because you’re smart. You sell the investments, withdraw the money and recognized a $17,000 taxable gain, all at ordinary income tax rates.
There are more devils in the details of course, but you get the general idea. To put money away in a tax deferred retirement account when that income was already going to be excluded generally does not make sense. A Roth IRA in this situation would be more ideal.
Implementing a 401k plan doesn’t solve any problems either. According to the IRS and specifically IRC Sections 1402(a)(11), 3401(a)(8) and 911, and Revenue Ruling 70-491, if all your income is excluded using the foreign earned income exclusion, then you cannot contribute to a 401k plan.
Revenue Ruling 70-491 sums it up from 1970 (when the foreign earned income exclusion was $25,000). An attorney established a profit-sharing plan and earned $40,000. The ruling stated only $15,000 was considered earned income for the purposes of Section 401 (which is where we get 401k plan stuff).
This KB article is an excerpt from our 420+ page book (some picture pages, but no scatch and sniff) which is available in paperback from Amazon, as an eBook for Kindle and as a PDF from ClickBank. We used to publish with iTunes and Nook, but keeping up with two different formats was brutal. You can cruise through these KB articles online, click on the fancy buttons below or visit our webpage which provides more information.
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Please use the form below to tell us a little about yourself, and what you have going on with your small business or 1099 contractor gig. WCG CPAs & Advisors are small business CPAs, tax professionals and consultants, and we look forward to talking to you!
The tax advisors, business consultants and rental property experts at WCG CPAs & Advisors are not salespeople; we are not putting lipstick on a pig expecting you to love it. Our job remains being professionally detached, giving you information and letting you decide within our ethical guidelines and your risk profiles.
We see far too many crazy schemes and half-baked ideas from attorneys and wealth managers. In some cases, they are good ideas. In most cases, all the entities, layering and mixed ownership is only the illusion of precision. As Chris Rock says, just because you can drive your car with your feet doesn’t make it a good idea. In other words, let’s not automatically convert “you can” into “you must.”
Let’s chat so you can be smart about it.
We typically schedule a 20-minute complimentary quick chat with one of our Partners or our amazing Senior Tax Professionals to determine if we are a good fit for each other, and how an engagement with our team looks. Tax returns only? Business advisory? Tax strategy and planning? Rental property support?
Taxes can be tricky. Chat with a WCG human now and get questions answered.
Everything you need to help you launch your new business entity from business entity selection to multiple-entity business structures.
Designed for rental property owners where WCG CPAs & Advisors supports you as your real estate CPA.
Everything you need from tax return preparation for your small business to your rental to your corporation is here.
WCG’s primary objective is to help you to feel comfortable about engaging with us