Choosing To Take Credit or Deduction

You can choose each tax year to take the amount of any qualified foreign taxes paid or accrued during the year as a foreign tax credit or as an itemized deduction. You can change your choice for each year's taxes.

To choose the foreign tax credit, you generally must complete Form 1116 and attach it to your U.S. tax return. However, you may qualify for an exception that allows you to claim the foreign tax credit without using Form 1116. See How To Figure the Credit, later. To choose to claim the taxes as an itemized deduction, use Schedule A (Form 1040), Itemized Deductions.

Figure your tax both ways--claiming the credit and claiming the deduction. Then fill out your return the way that benefits you most. See Why Choose the Credit, later.

Choice Applies to All Qualified Foreign Taxes

As a general rule, you must choose to take either a credit or a deduction for all qualified foreign taxes.

If you choose to take a credit for qualified foreign taxes, you must take the credit for all of them. You cannot deduct any of them. Conversely, if you choose to deduct qualified foreign taxes, you must deduct all of them. You cannot take a credit for any of them.

See What Foreign Taxes Qualify for the Credit, later, for the meaning of qualified foreign taxes.

There are exceptions to this general rule, which are described next.

Exceptions for foreign taxes not allowed as a credit. Even if you claim a credit for other foreign taxes, you can deduct any foreign tax that is not allowed as a credit if:

1. You paid the tax to a country for which a credit is not allowed because it provides support for acts of international terrorism, or because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with it or recognize its government,
2. You paid withholding tax on dividends from foreign corporations whose stock you did not hold for the required period of time,
3. You participated in or cooperated with an international boycott, or
4. You paid taxes in connection with the purchase or sale of oil or gas.

For more information on these items, see the discussion later under Foreign Taxes for Which You Cannot Take a Credit.

Foreign taxes that are not income taxes. Generally, only foreign income taxes qualify for the foreign tax credit. Other taxes, such as foreign real and personal property taxes, do not qualify. But you may be able to deduct these other taxes even if you claim the foreign tax credit for foreign income taxes.

You generally can deduct these other taxes only if they are expenses incurred in a trade or business or in the production of income. However, you can deduct foreign real property taxes that are not trade or business expenses as an itemized deduction on Schedule A (Form 1040).

Carrybacks and carryovers. There is a limit on the credit you can claim in a tax year. If your qualified foreign taxes exceed the credit limit, you may be able to carry over or carry back the excess to another tax year. If you deduct qualified foreign taxes in a tax year, you cannot use a carryback or carryover in that year. That is because you cannot take both a deduction and a credit for qualified foreign taxes in the same tax year.

For more information on the limit, see How To Figure the Credit, later. For more information on carrybacks and carryovers, see Carryback and Carryover, later.

Making or Changing Your Choice

You can make or change your choice to claim a deduction or credit at any time during the period within 10 years from the due date for filing the return for the tax year for which you make the claim. You make or change your choice on your tax return (or on an amended return) for the year your choice is to be effective.

Example. You paid foreign taxes for the last 13 years and chose to deduct them on your U.S. income tax returns. You were timely in both filing your returns and paying your U.S. tax liability. In February 2001 you file an amended return for tax year 1990 choosing to take a credit for your 1990 foreign taxes because you now realize that the credit is more advantageous than the deduction for that year. Because your return for 1990 was not due until April 15, 1991, this choice is timely (within 10 years).

Because there is a limit on the credit for your 1990 foreign tax, you have unused 1990 foreign taxes. Ordinarily, you first carry back unused foreign taxes and claim them as a credit in the 2 preceding tax years. If you are unable to claim all of them in those 2 years, you carry them forward to the 5 years following the year in which they arose.

Because you originally chose to deduct your foreign taxes and the 10-year period for changing the choice for 1988 and 1989 has passed, you cannot carry the unused 1990 foreign taxes back to tax years 1988 and 1989.

Because the 10-year periods have not passed for your 1991 through 1995 income tax returns, you can still choose to carry forward any unused 1990 foreign taxes. However, you must reduce the unused 1990 foreign taxes that you carry forward by the amount that would have been allowed as a carryback if you had timely carried back the foreign tax to tax years 1988 and 1989.

You cannot take a credit or a deduction for foreign taxes paid on income you exclude under the foreign earned income exclusion or the foreign housing exclusion.

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