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, go to our FEC Worksheet - Entering Foreign Earned Income in the Program FAQ.
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, go to our Printing Your Return and Individual Forms FAQ.
Note that any link in the information above is updated each year automatically and will take you to the most recent version of the webpage or document at the time it is accessed.