The Expat Tax Coach Toolkit

Free International Tax Calculators & Tracking Tools

Travel days, foreign rentals, FEIE windows, FBAR balances & FATCA thresholds. Tools designed to track & optimize as you go, so your tax prep is finished long before your return starts.

Enter your email to get access to the toolkit.

FEIEFBARFATCAForm 8938Schedule ESTR Rules

These tools & trackers are the same ones we use with our clients at McGowin Tax to maintain accurate records and ensure compliance with complex international tax requirements with the least amount of burden on their time.

What's Inside
Professional-grade tools for international tax compliance.

Interactive calculations & tracking that are easy to use & understand, with IRS citations & explanations for each step. These tools not only guide you through the process, but also actively help optimize & model your tax decisions as you go.

01

Foreign Rental Tracker

Everything Schedule E will ask for, captured while you still remember it.

What it tracks

Property & transaction logging. Ownership structure, acquisition facts, financing and local currency - plus a worksheet that groups every transaction under its Schedule E category.

Occupancy & use metrics. Fair-rental, personal-use and maintenance days, with average guest stay computed for you.

Asset & STR planning. Improvement logs for later depreciation review, and an optional short-term rental block for material-participation tests, the 7-day / 30-day exceptions and a labor hours log.

Schedule EDepreciationSTR
02

Basic Travel Tracker

Log your year as you live it - instead of reconstructing it from boarding passes.

What it tracks

Chronological travel log. Non-overlapping date ranges, locations and trip reasons, kept in order.

Day classification. Time separated into full foreign days, full U.S. days, and travel or partial days.

Purpose mapping. Each window labeled work, personal or mixed - summarized as foreign versus domestic workdays for sourcing.

Day CountsIncome Sourcing
03

FEIE Planner 2026

Find the exclusion you actually qualify for - and the window that gets you there.

What it tracks

Qualification testing. Physical Presence - including the optimal rolling 12-month window holding 330 foreign days - alongside Bona Fide Residence standards.

Income sourcing. Compensation types tracked and allocated by foreign service percentage to isolate qualifying foreign earned income.

Housing cost optimization. Foreign housing expenses measured against base amounts and localized caps to size the additional exclusion or deduction.

FEIE330 DaysHousing Exclusion
04

Form 8938 Asset Tracker

The FATCA inventory that decides whether you file at all.

What it tracks

FATCA asset inventory. Specified foreign financial assets held outside institutions - private equity, pension interests, cash-value insurance - categorized alongside foreign accounts.

Threshold analysis. Filing status and residency - in the U.S. or abroad - drive separate year-end and maximum-during-year tests.

Cross-form synchronization. Flags assets also reported on Forms 5471, 8621 or 3520 so values consolidate without double-counting.

FATCAForm 89385471 / 8621 / 3520
05

FBAR Account Tracker

Every foreign account, converted and tested against the $10,000 line.

What it tracks

Account registry. Checking, savings, brokerage and retirement accounts plus cash-value policies held outside the United States, in one register.

Authority tracking. Joint accounts and signature-only authority - where there is no beneficial ownership - handled properly.

Treasury valuation. Year-end Treasury reporting rates of exchange convert maximum local balances to USD, then test the aggregate against the filing threshold.

FBARFinCEN 114$10,000 Threshold

Take all five

The toolkit is free, and it lives inside the community - so you always pull the current version, not a stale attachment from last season.

Get My Invite
How It Works

Email > Download > Save Time/Money

1.Enter your email

We'll send an invite to "The Expat Tax Coach" where you can download the toolkit & access any future members-only content for free.

2.Download the toolkit

You'll be directed to a page where you can view & download the resources you're interested in.

3.Track your progress

Throw the tools in a drive, track your financial events right when they happen (most use their phone), and start the new year without thinking about your tax return.

Beyond the Toolkit
The Expat Tax Coach Community

The Expat Tax Coach is where the planners live - and where people like you ask questions, get answers and take their finances to the next level.

The Resource Library

All five planners on demand, plus the Professional Rolodex - vetted contacts for the places your money touches.

Talking Taxes

Ask which day counts, whether an account belongs on the FBAR, how a joint holding is reported - and read what other expats have already worked through.

Member-only videos & courses

Walkthroughs, posts and courses - like Purchasing Foreign Property - that don't appear anywhere public.

Access to Experts

Alex & his team answer members in the feed - outside of a paid engagement.

Join the Community

Members also get our newsletter - deadlines, threshold changes and new tools, a few times a year. Unsubscribe whenever.

International Finances Are Complex

The costliest mistakes in international tax are informational.

What you don't know can hurt you. The toolkit is built to surface exposures while there is still time to do something about them by moving your tax prep forward.

Penalties on foreign information reporting rarely come from owing too little tax. They come from a form nobody knew to file, a threshold crossed mid-year, a balance converted at the wrong rate. The toolkit is built to surface those exposures before they happen.

Used together, the planners map your physical presence, separate foreign from domestic earnings, and screen rental activity for material-participation issues - then apply the thresholds that match your living situation and filing status. What reaches your preparer in February is organized, sourced and audit-ready.

What the toolkit catches early

A 12-month window that misses 330 days by a week

Aggregate foreign balances crossing $10,000 for a single day

A pension or insurance policy that belongs on Form 8938

Signature authority on an account you don't own

Personal-use days quietly disqualifying rental deductions

Holdings double-counted across Forms 8938, 5471 and 3520

Before you get started

Yes. All five planners are free to members, and membership in The Expat Tax Coach costs nothing. There is no card and no trial.

Keeping them in the community means you always pull the current version, and we're updating these tools all the time, so you can know when there is an update. Also because the tools raise questions. You can ask about your own situation where other expats and the McGowin Tax team can answer - without paying for a consultation.

Spreadsheets, built to be filled in as your year happens rather than reconstructed at filing time. They open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. A lot of users add these trackers to Google Sheets and have Gemini or ChatGPT add entries for them, then review the results every few weeks.

No. They replace the shoebox. The planners organize and source your data so your preparer - ours or your own - spends the engagement on strategy instead of chasing records.

If you live abroad, start with the Basic Travel Tracker and the FEIE Planner - day counts drive most of what follows. If you hold foreign accounts or assets, the FBAR and Form 8938 trackers come next. Foreign rental owners should add the Foreign Rental Tracker before their next booking season.

They have been folded into the toolkit. The five planners cover everything the previous trackers did, in more detail and with the current year's figures. When these get replaced by the next generation of the toolkit, you'll be grandfathered in to the those tools for free.

Start the year organized.

Five planners, a resource library and a room full of people crossing the same borders. Enter your email and we'll send the invite.

Free forever. Unsubscribe whenever. No client is too small.

Services

Expat Tax ServicesInternational Corporate Tax ConsultationFirm to Firm Support

Contact

(251) 588-9113alex@mcgowintax.comMobile, AL

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