I have lived in Finland my whole life, but I am a U.S. dual citizen
My mom is American, and has lived here for 20+ years, and files Finnish taxes. My dad is
Finnish
She has to file U.S. taxes, but it’s more just paperwork bureaucracy, because her Finnish tax return is her main return.
My mom was told by the CSS chat help line, to use her Finnish tax returns to fill out the CSS profile. Now in IDOC, they are asking her to upload her U.S. tax returns. But she used her Finnish ones in the CSS profile? So does she have to upload her U.S tax return or not. Won’t it look weird or not match if she uses her Finnish ones?
I had the same situation. I’d first upload the US Tax Return and then add the Finnish one as well, maybe as a separate PDF (or as one if they don’t allow two uploads). This is what I did and they were okay with it (also a US dual citizen).
Yes, you do need to upload the US tax return even if all the income was exempted as foreign earned income. They will also ask for your Finnish return so they can see your father’s income and your taxes paid in Finland.
We made sure that we also communicated directly with the financial aid office at the schools we applied to and made sure they understood that the foreign return provided the clearest picture of our income.
Something to watch out for: One school made an error in their calculations: they counted my income twice: by counting my income on the foreign return and then again on the US return (adding back the foreign earned income exemption as income). I was able to identify this error because their financial aid offer was way off base. They fixed the error.