I read much the same thing while researching teaching ESL in South Korea. Quickly googling, the current figure for federal exemption is $70,000 (with another $8,000 for housing costs):
The flip answer is that while South Korea seems like a nice place & country, I learned America has no monopoly on xenophobia and North Korea is an even sadder and more twisted country than I had imagined. Were you thinking about anything in particular?
I have tendinitis and therefore unable to do my preferred work as a computer programmer. Thought I would spend the next few months living in a foreign country doing some form of work that doesn’t involve a lot of typing while my tendinitis recovers.
Ah. South Korea probably isn’t for you then; just getting the FBI background check will cost you a month or three, and teaching contracts tend to be for the academic year. China might be better from an ESL-teaching perspective (which is what my reading focused on), but things are opaque and rather fast-and-loose there—one of my friends was just kicked out of there a few weeks back after the job started, supposedly because he was using too much profanity.
Not if you’re abroad a whole year and you make under a certain amount… forget the exact figure right now but it’s much higher than $39k/yr exempted.
You have to file one extra form with your tax paperwork.
I read much the same thing while researching teaching ESL in South Korea. Quickly googling, the current figure for federal exemption is $70,000 (with another $8,000 for housing costs):
http://www.filetax.com/expat.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/09/your-money/09iht-mrta.html
Care to summarize what you learned from your ESL research?
The flip answer is that while South Korea seems like a nice place & country, I learned America has no monopoly on xenophobia and North Korea is an even sadder and more twisted country than I had imagined. Were you thinking about anything in particular?
I have tendinitis and therefore unable to do my preferred work as a computer programmer. Thought I would spend the next few months living in a foreign country doing some form of work that doesn’t involve a lot of typing while my tendinitis recovers.
Ah. South Korea probably isn’t for you then; just getting the FBI background check will cost you a month or three, and teaching contracts tend to be for the academic year. China might be better from an ESL-teaching perspective (which is what my reading focused on), but things are opaque and rather fast-and-loose there—one of my friends was just kicked out of there a few weeks back after the job started, supposedly because he was using too much profanity.
Not sure I understood that properly, is the $70,000/year, or lifetime?
Per year.
Ah, thanks. :)