What online tax filing services do expats recommend for filing USA taxes from abroad?

I use TaxAct for a non resident 1040NR return for the past several years. One of the few that allows non residents to e-file. If you use the link from the IRS website you can file for free if your AGI is less than $89k.

Whatever service you use, don't use expats online. They are absolutely woeful. Took 4 months to do my return last year and charged me excess costs twice before they were complete - what use to cost me 329 usd for return and fbar suddenly was over 1,000 usd. between the three seperate invoices they sent me. Very disorganised and rude customer service. I do not recommend. This year going with someone else - will cost the same but at least they were upfront about it. I'll wait to see how they do before giving a recommend for them though.

Tax Slayer. I did my taxes for 47.00 online. Screw Turbo Tax.

FreeTaxUSA has worked well filing from overseas for several years running. The key is using a VPN and a US number to receive the login verification codes (Google Voice is fine). One important caveat: it does not support Form 2555 or the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, so if that applies to your situation, you will need to look elsewhere.

TurboTax Premier is currently $82 on Amazon. I paid $89 for it back in February, so the price has come down a little.

If you have money in a foreign bank account under $10k, TurboTax will handle the correct forms for you automatically. Over $10k, I'm not sure what happens, so you may want to look into that.

A couple of notes from my experience:

• I did NOT use a VPN while filing.

• If you're using AI to help with your taxes, be prepared to push back and ask follow-up questions. Misunderstandings do happen and you sometimes have to dig to get the right answer. Always ask for verifiable responses, though with taxes there are gray areas.

I was thinking of using one of the expat tax services, but it would have cost $1000+ with all the forms that I needed.

As Todd said, VPN connected to somewhere in the US. A lot of US-based sites won't work outside the US without VPN.

Also, invest in a US-based VOIP number (or keep a low-cost US number with Mint, Boost, etc depending on how much you return).

Get a free Vpn. Set location to USA. use Turbo tax free version. Keep it simple. 1099 from whom?

If you have an AI service like Claude or Open AI it will walk you through the whole thing even gathering the forms you need and help you fill them out.

I gather I may be the only one who doesn't recognize the acronym, but could someone please tell me what OLT is?

OLT. Very popular for expats.