You are an American in Israel. You have not filed in years.
This is one of the most common situations there is, and the IRS built a program specifically to fix it. For Americans living outside the United States, that program carries no penalties at all.
Aplomb Business Management prepares streamlined filing submissions for US citizens living in Israel. Flat fee, quoted before we start. Nothing you tell us leaves this office.
Every conversation is confidential, whether or not you become a client.
The Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures
The IRS runs a catch-up program for taxpayers whose failure to file was not willful. For people who live outside the United States and meet the residency test, the terms are these:
You pay the tax that was actually owed for those three years, plus interest, if any is owed at all. For most people living and working in Israel, once the foreign earned income exclusion or the foreign tax credit is applied properly, the number that comes out the bottom is zero or close to it.
That last sentence is the one people do not believe until they see their own return.
Your Israeli accountant does not do US returns. Your American accountant has never heard of a keren hishtalmut.
That gap is where the mistakes live, and it is the entire reason this service exists.
An Israeli life produces US filings that a general expat preparer will handle badly or not at all:
If any of this sounds familiar, you are in the right place
You made aliyah, or you came back, and someone told you Americans have to keep filing. You meant to look into it. Then there was an apartment, and a bank account you could not open without signing something called a W-9, and a job, and a war, and it has been six years.
Or you knew the whole time and could not face the number you imagined you owed.
Or your bank in Israel sent you a letter about FATCA and you have been sitting with it on the counter for three weeks.
Or your accountant in Israel is excellent and told you honestly that US filings are not what he does.
Nobody in this position is unusual. The State Department estimates that a substantial share of Americans abroad have never filed, and Israel has one of the largest American citizen populations of any country in the world. You are not the first person to walk in with this, and the number is almost never as bad as the imagining.
Some people finish this owing nothing and holding a refund
The child tax credit is partly refundable, it is claimed per child per year, and it is available to Americans abroad who use the foreign tax credit rather than the exclusion. A family with several children who files three catch-up years can end up receiving money from the IRS rather than paying it.
There is a catch worth understanding, because it is where cheap preparation costs people real money. The foreign earned income exclusion and the refundable child credit do not work together. A preparer who applies the exclusion by default because it is fast, without modeling the foreign tax credit alongside it, can quietly cost a family with four children thousands of dollars across three years. We model both before either one goes on a return.
Refunds can only be claimed within a limited window after the original due date, and the oldest of your three years is usually the first to close. Every year you wait, one year of refund goes away permanently.
We will tell you if you are not a candidate
The streamlined program is only available where the failure to file was not willful, and that determination is not a formality. Signing Form 14653 is signing under penalty of perjury.
We will not take an engagement where the facts do not support the certification. If you knew you had an obligation and made a decision to hide accounts, or you are already under IRS examination, or you have been contacted about an account you did not report, streamlined is the wrong door and going through it can turn a civil problem into something much worse. In those situations the right move is a voluntary disclosure through counsel, and we will tell you that and point you to someone who does it.
Screening for this properly is part of what you are paying for.
Five steps, in order
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. You describe the situation and we tell you whether streamlined looks like the right program.
A fixed-fee diagnostic. We pull your IRS wage and income transcripts, take a proper history, identify every account and asset that has to be reported, and screen the non-willfulness question honestly. You finish this step with a written scope and a firm price. If you decide to go ahead, the diagnostic fee comes off the engagement.
Three years of returns, six years of FBARs, and every international form your facts require. We model the exclusion against the foreign tax credit rather than defaulting to whichever is quicker.
Form 14653 is a narrative, not a checkbox, and it is the part of the submission the IRS actually reads. We draft it from your facts and you review every line before it is signed.
The package goes in. Then we tell you plainly what your filing life looks like from here, because after this you are a filer every year, and the point of doing it once properly is never doing it again.
Flat fee, quoted in writing, before any work starts
We do not bill this hourly. You will know the number before you commit, and the number does not move unless the facts turn out to be different from what you told us.
Fees are quoted in US dollars. Half on engagement, half before submission.
Jeffrey Stein, Certified Public Accountant
Every streamlined submission that leaves this office is prepared and signed by a licensed American CPA. Nothing is routed to a seasonal preparer, and nothing goes out on a template.
This practice does one thing: US filings for Americans whose financial life is in Israel. Because that is the whole caseload, the questions that decide your return, which accounts are reportable, whether the exclusion or the credit serves you better, what your old state still thinks it is owed, get asked in the first ten minutes rather than the third meeting.
Questions people actually ask
One conversation tells you where you stand.
Thirty minutes, no charge, and no obligation to go further. Most people leave the call less worried than they came in, and a few leave knowing they are owed money.
We will write back within one business day with two or three times, in Israel time. There is nothing to prepare in the meantime.
We will ask what happened, roughly what you earn, and what accounts exist. Thirty minutes, no charge, and no obligation to go further.
Nothing you told us leaves this office. Reach us any time at info@aplomb.cpa or on WhatsApp.
Aplomb Business Management provides US tax compliance services. Information on this page is general and does not constitute tax advice for any particular person. Eligibility for the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures depends on individual facts, including the requirement that the failure to file was not willful. The IRS does not issue acceptance letters for streamlined submissions, and no outcome is guaranteed.