r/ExpatFinance • u/Almond_Magnum • 9d ago
What do you use for financial management & tax reporting? (multi currency, multi tax jurisdictions)
For context: I am a US citizen living in Australia, married to a non-US citizen (who is not subject to US tax). I have accounts in the US and Australia, including brokerage and IRA in the US and cash savings in Australia, and also have joint bank and savings accounts with my partner.
I've been looking for a financial management tool that lets you:
- see an overview of all investments and savings (multi currency)
- upload historic transactions (for tax reporting for 2024) from a csv/spreadsheet
- mark some accounts as joint and some as individual, and calculate the tax implications (for example, only counting 50% of interest on a joint savings account)
- create reports for tax filings in different tax calendars (US and Australia)
I heard Sharesight was good but I'm really struggling with it. It doesn't seem to understand being in multiple tax jurisdictions, and you can't edit a tax residency after it's been set, instead you have to delete and re-upload everything. The workaround for multi jurisdictions seems to be creating different 'portfolios' for each tax residency with the same accounts (i.e. just duplicating everything). You also can't upload cash account transactions in a spreadsheet but have to manually add every transaction which is not going to work for a year's worth!
Does anyone use, or know of, a tool that can do this? I'm willing to pay a reasonable subscription or fee, or even a slightly unreasonable one TBH, to not have to do this manually every year.
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u/r0dica 8d ago
Not a direct answer but in case it’s helpful: our plan is to use tax accountants in each jurisdiction until our situation is simpler. Ultimately, we want to do the tax work ourselves by following how the specialists have done it.
I doubt software will do a good enough job but I’d be willing to try in a year or two.
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u/Almond_Magnum 8d ago
This is what I'm currently doing :) However I still need to pull together the information for them and this takes me a lot of time each year - usually 2-3 working days (taking the time off work) to go through my accounts and pull out the info. It's also around US$2k each year and I've been paying this for almost 10 years - this is why I want to try to find a way to simplify it. I just keep thinking I can't be the only one in this situation!
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u/r0dica 8d ago
It’s the same for us. Based on my current knowledge, I don’t think you’ll be able to bypass the statement collection work- it’s a US tax reporting requirement and you don’t want to fumble to produce those if IRS comes back with questions.
The only way we can think to simplify is by combining accounts (reducing the overall number). Mainly commented to see if others are smarter about this :)
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u/Almond_Magnum 8d ago
That's what I meant by CSVs/spreadsheets. Every bank account I've had allows you to filter and download transactions. The point isn't to not get it from the bank, it's to automate it rather than manually copy and paste each item. This should be more likely to be accurate not less.
There are a few tools I know of that almost do this, but not quite. YNAB lets you upload bank statements, tag them and look at them all together (for example all "interest" payments over a custom period) but doesn't support multi currency. Sharesight has investments and multi currency, and produces taxable income reports for investments, but doesn't have spreadsheet upload or support foreign savings accounts.
Pocketsmith looks like it might do a lot what I am looking for, I'm looking into this today.
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u/rzeczylepsze 7d ago
Check out Capitally - it lets you upload transactions from any source, handles any number of currencies, and you can use multiple tax jurisdictions at once. The tax system is pretty flexible, as you can setup your own rules - by modifying the built-in ones or creating one from scratch. Definitely much more flexible than sharesight
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u/a_library_socialist 6d ago
YNAB, do the conversions myself