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Foreign Income - Foreign Pension or Social Security
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If you received a foreign pension, you first must determine whether the foreign pension is taxable. TaxAct® has no process to determine this; please review the following IRS links to make this determination:

Once you determine the amount of foreign pension that is taxable, there are two places you can enter the pension amount. In a few instances (based on treaties), the pension benefits can be entered as Social Security benefits. However, the most common place to enter foreign pension benefits is on the Foreign Employer Compensation (FEC) and Pensions worksheet.

To enter the foreign pension benefits on the FEC worksheet within TaxAct:

  1. From within your TaxAct return (Online or Desktop), click Federal. On smaller devices, click in the upper left-hand corner, then click Federal.
  2. Click Retirement Plan Income in the Federal Quick Q&A Topics menu to expand, then click Foreign pension distributions.
  3. Click + Add Form 1040 FEC to create a new copy of the form or click Edit to review a form already created.
  4. Continue with the interview process to enter all of the appropriate information.
  5. On the screen titled Foreign Employer Compensation and Pensions - Payer's Name, select the foreign country from the Payer's country code drop-down, then click Continue.

Note. If you do not select a country, you will receive a Red Alert titled FEC - Employer Information during the electronic filing steps, which will prevent you from being able to e-file your tax return.

The FEC worksheet is not an IRS form, but is a worksheet only in the TaxAct program used to collect the information and transfer it to the appropriate place on the return. All information entered on the worksheet is transmitted with the return if it is electronically filed. If the return is paper filed, there is no documentation required to be sent with the return. The IRS will contact the taxpayer if they need any additional information on the amount entered on the return for foreign retirement income. If you would still like to print the FEC worksheet to mail with the return, the following steps will allow you to do that.

Online Navigation Instructions
  1. From within your TaxAct Online return, click Print Center down the left to expand, then click Custom Print.
  2. Check what you wish to print (the top section contains individual forms or schedules and the bottom section contains documents or worksheets). You may need to scroll down in the section to locate the items.
  3. Click Print, then click the PDF link. Click the printer icon or the save icon (available when you hover your mouse over the PDF form) to print or save the PDF copy.

Note. If you see a message indicating you have not paid your return fees, click the View/Pay your return fees link, which will direct you through the Paper Filing steps. Continue through the screens until you have processed the payment for your product fees and then repeat the steps to print.

Desktop Navigation Instructions
  1. Start your TaxAct Desktop program, then click Forms in the top left corner.
  2. Click to expand the Federal folder, then click to expand the Documents Received folder.
  3. Click to expand Form 1040/1040NR FEC - Foreign Employer Compensation and Pensions, then double-click the copy you wish to print.
  4. Click the Printer icon in the toolbar. In the print dialog box that appears, you can send the output to a printer or a PDF document.

Note that any link in the information above is updated each year automatically and will take you to the most recent version of the document at the time it is accessed.