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Living Abroad question

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hawkerjet

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 27, 2001
Posts
606
A question for the Cargo pilots that work for Southern, Atlas, Polar, Kallita or Evergreen.... As an american citizen working for one of these companies, can you live in a foreign land such as Hong Kong. The reason I ask is that some companies airline you to where the aircraft is, I wondered if you could live anywhere or are there limits.
My curiousity has the better of me......
 
I can only speak for 2 of the companies having been there, but they don't mind. I and many other crew members actually live outside the USA. As long as I am in base or where my line starts in the lower 48 when I have to be it's not a problem.

It helps if you live on one of the regular routes as you can JS to work easily or even if your nice to CS, you can start your trip / line closer to home.

Remember that although you live outside the USA you still have to file taxes in the US.
 
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I can only speak for 2 of the companies having been there, but they don't mind. I and many other crew members actually live outside the USA. As long as I am in base or where my line starts in the lower 48 when I have to be it's not a problem.

It helps if you live on one of the regular routes as you can JS to work easily or even if your nice to CS, you can start your trip / line closer to home.

Remember that although you live outside the USA you still have to file taxes in the US.


Hi Victor,

Assuming one worked for one of the cargo companies mentioned at the top of the thread and lived abroad. How many days would you spend in the USA as part of your duties? Reason I ask is because if you spend 330 or more of 365 out of the USA, you don't have to pay state or federal taxes. Would you be able to jig your schedule so that you're always in HKG or DXB or where ever.....or would you spend some of your duty days stateside, which would put you over the limit in a hurry?

Just curious,

FCN
 
I can't speak for all the above named carriers, but I can say that certain employees do live abroad. I know of others who don't, but who end their tours in Europe or elsewhere and travel around on their time off.

In the case of at least one carrier, the company flies you from your home to the airplane, where ever that is. If you're going to be coming from a more expensive, international location, you'll probably be responsible for the cost of your own travel in excess of what it would have cost to get you to the airplane from a stateside location...but you'd have to negotiate that with the company.

Percentage of time spent stateside? Impossible to guess. Each rotation changes frequently once you arrive at the airplane, and there's no telling where you'll be, and when. Generally the airplane begins moving and doesn't stop, so you could be doing back-and forth trips across the atlantic, or you could be continually going east-bound around the world, or doing hops between europe and certain theaters of operation, etc. On any given day you might plan to be going to Hong Kong yet wind up in Lagos, or plan to go to Liege, and wind up in Honolulu.
 
Hi Victor,

Assuming one worked for one of the cargo companies mentioned at the top of the thread and lived abroad. How many days would you spend in the USA as part of your duties? Reason I ask is because if you spend 330 or more of 365 out of the USA, you don't have to pay state or federal taxes. Would you be able to jig your schedule so that you're always in HKG or DXB or where ever.....or would you spend some of your duty days stateside, which would put you over the limit in a hurry?

Just curious,

FCN

I do not live or work outside of the USA (yet) but from all of the research I have done, the tax thing works one of several ways:

If you are a US resident but work outside of the US and are away for at least 330 days of the year, the first $87,500 of your income is tax free.

If you are a US citizen but a legal resident of a foriegn country, the first $87,500 of your income is tax free regardless of how much time you spend in/outside of the USA.

If you are a US citizen and/or resident, and you work and pay taxes in a foriegn country with which the USA has a tax treaty (you can find this on the IRS website - it is pretty extensive) the taxes paid to the other country are deducted from your US tax liability. If your liability in the other country is greater than what it is in the US (and in most cases it is) you end up owning no taxes to the US.

Regardless of whether you owe taxes or not, or live in the US or not, as a US citizen, you must still file a return.
 
NEDude, thanks for that you replied to Nelson question to me! Where I live the tax is a tad higher than the US so I don't have to pay tax to the US. I don't have / get half the deductions I could in the US so it can get interesting. The treaty is so US citizens don't have to pay tax twice to two countries (US and other).
 

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