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Understanding Dual Contributions: Korean National Pension vs. U.S. FICA

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Understanding Dual Contributions: Korean National Pension vs. U.S. FICA Navigating social security systems across borders can be confusing—especially for employees working between Korea and the U.S. A recurring question is: Can someone pay into both Korea’s National Pension and U.S. FICA (Social Security and Medicare taxes) at the same time—and what happens if they do? This post breaks down how the Korea–U.S. Totalization Agreement works, what “coverage” means, and the consequences of dual contributions. 1. The Totalization Agreement at a Glance ๐Ÿ‡ฐ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ Since 2001, the Korea–U.S. Totalization Agreement has coordinated social security coverage between the two countries. Its primary goal is to: Prevent double taxation of social security contributions on the same income during the same time period Protect future benefit rights for cross-border workers Key principles: At any given time, only one country’s social security system applies to your wages C...

Tax Savings Tip of the Week: Max Out Your Retirement Contributions (But Know the Limits)!

Hey money-savvy friends! ๐Ÿ™Œ Want a simple (and totally legal) way to cut your tax bill while building your future nest egg? Let’s talk about retirement contributions . ๐Ÿง“๐Ÿฝ๐ŸŒด If you’ve got a 401(k) through your job, try to contribute as much as you can—especially up to the employer match. That’s free money , folks! And your contributions are made pre-tax , which reduces your taxable income . Less income = less tax. ๐ŸŽฏ No 401(k)? No problem. You can contribute to a Traditional IRA , and depending on your income and situation, you may be able to deduct that contribution on your taxes too. BUT here's the catch ๐Ÿ›‘—if you're already covered by a workplace retirement plan like a 401(k), you might not be able to deduct your IRA contributions, especially if your income is above certain limits. ๐Ÿ‘‰ Translation: You can technically contribute to both a 401(k) and a Traditional IRA in the same year, but you may not get a tax break on both. 2025 contribution limits: 401(k): Up to $...

C Corporation vs. S Corporation vs. Partnership_Example

Choosing the Right Business Structure: C Corporation vs. S Corporation vs. Partnership Selecting the right business entity is crucial for taxation, liability, and operational flexibility. Here’s how C Corporation, S Corporation, and Partnership compare using real-world examples. Example 1: Tech Startup – C Corporation Company Name: TechX Solutions Inc. Industry: AI-based software development Business Structure: C Corporation ๐Ÿ“Œ Why a C Corporation? Attracting Investors : Venture capitalists prefer C Corps as they allow unlimited shareholders and different stock classes. Scaling Potential : The company plans to go public in the future, so unlimited shareholders are ideal. Structured Management : A formal leadership team with a CEO, CFO, and Board of Directors ensures clear governance. ✅ Pros: Easier to raise capital, established corporate structure ❌ Cons: Subject to double taxation , requires strict compliance Example 2: Small Consulting Firm – S Corporation Company Name...

C Corporation vs. S Corporation vs. Partnership

C Corporation vs. S Corporation vs. Partnership: Choosing the Right Business Structure When starting a business, selecting the right entity type is crucial for taxes, liability, and management flexibility. Three common structures— C Corporation, S Corporation, and Partnership —each offer distinct advantages and limitations. Let's break down their key differences to help you make an informed decision. 1. C Corporation (C Corp) Best for: Large businesses planning to raise significant capital or go public. Taxation: Subject to double taxation —profits are taxed at the corporate level, and dividends distributed to shareholders are taxed again on their personal returns. Ownership: Unlimited number of shareholders allowed; preferred by investors. Liability Protection: Owners (shareholders) have limited liability —their personal assets are protected from business debts. Management: Operates with a board of directors and officers, ensuring a structured leadership hierarchy. C...

Bookkeeping Categorization/ ํšŒ๊ณ„ ๋ถ„๋ฅ˜

Mastering  Bookkeeping Categorization : The Foundation of Financial Clarity Whether you're running a startup, managing freelance income, or just trying to keep your side hustle organized, one of the most overlooked—but absolutely critical—parts of financial management is bookkeeping categorization . Properly categorizing your financial transactions is more than a clerical task—it's the key to informed decision-making, tax compliance, and business growth. What Is Bookkeeping Categorization? At its core, bookkeeping categorization involves labeling each transaction (income, expense, asset, liability, or equity) so it fits into a well-defined chart of accounts. These categories help paint a clear picture of your financial health, ensure accurate reporting, and simplify tax time. Example: Date Description Amount Category 2025-05-03 Shopify Sales $1,200 Income 2025-05-05 Google Ads $300 Advertising 2025-05-07 MacBook Purchase $2,000 Equipment Why Is It Important? 1. Tax Deduc...

๋ฏธ๊ตญ ๋ฒ•์ธ์„ธ Estimated Tax ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€

  ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ๋ฒ•์ธ์„ธ Estimated Tax ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ ์‹œ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„ ํ™•์ธ ํ•„์š” ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ๋ฒ•์ธ์˜ Estimated Tax(์˜ˆ๋‚ฉ์„ธ) ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ ์‹œ, ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„ ์„ค์ •์— ๋”ฐ๋ผ ๋ถˆํ•„์š”ํ•œ Penalty ๋ฐ Interest๊ฐ€ ๋ฐœ์ƒํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์–ด ์ฃผ์˜๊ฐ€ ํ•„์š”ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. 1. ์˜ˆ๋‚ฉ์„ธ ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€์™€ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„์˜ ๋ถˆ์ผ์น˜ ๊ฐ€๋Šฅ์„ฑ ์˜ˆ๋‚ฉ์„ธ๋ฅผ ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ํ•  ๋•Œ ์‹ค์ œ ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ ์—ฐ๋„์™€๋Š” ๋‹ค๋ฅด๊ฒŒ, ์ด์ „ ์—ฐ๋„ ๊ท€์†์œผ๋กœ ์ฒ˜๋ฆฌํ•˜๋Š” ๊ฒฝ์šฐ๊ฐ€ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์˜ˆ๋ฅผ ๋“ค์–ด, 2025๋…„๋„์˜ Estimated Tax๋ฅผ 2024๋…„ ๊ท€์†์œผ๋กœ ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ํ•œ ๊ฒฝ์šฐ, ํ•ด๋‹น ๊ธˆ์•ก์ด IRS ์‹œ์Šคํ…œ์— 2024๋…„ ์„ธ๊ธˆ์œผ๋กœ ์ธ์‹๋˜์ง€ ์•Š์„ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์ด ๊ฒฝ์šฐ, IRS์—์„œ ๋ฐœ์†กํ•œ ๋ ˆํ„ฐ์— Penalty ๋ฐ Interest๊ฐ€ ํฌํ•จ๋˜์–ด ์•ˆ๋‚ด๋˜๋Š” ์‚ฌ๋ก€๊ฐ€ ๋ฐœ์ƒํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. 2. IRS ์‹œ์Šคํ…œ ์ƒ ์ฒ˜๋ฆฌ ๋ฐฉ์‹ IRS๋Š” ์„ธ๊ธˆ ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ ์‹œ ๋ช…ํ™•ํ•œ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„ ์ •๋ณด๊ฐ€ ์—†๊ฑฐ๋‚˜ ์ฐฉ์˜ค๊ฐ€ ์žˆ๋Š” ๊ฒฝ์šฐ, ํ•ด๋‹น ๊ธˆ์•ก์„ ์ž๋™์œผ๋กœ ๋‹ค์Œ ์—ฐ๋„ ์˜ˆ๋‚ฉ์œผ๋กœ ์ด์›” ์ฒ˜๋ฆฌํ•˜์ง€ ์•Š์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋”ฐ๋ผ์„œ, ์˜ˆ๋‚ฉ ์‹œ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„๊ฐ€ ์ •ํ™•ํžˆ ๋ฐ˜์˜๋˜์ง€ ์•Š์œผ๋ฉด IRS๋Š” ํ•ด๋‹น ๊ธˆ์•ก์„ ํ•ด๋‹น ์—ฐ๋„์˜ ์˜ˆ๋‚ฉ์œผ๋กœ ์ธ์ •ํ•˜์ง€ ์•Š์œผ๋ฉฐ, ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ ์ง€์—ฐ์œผ๋กœ ๊ฐ„์ฃผํ•˜์—ฌ Penalty ๋ฐ Interest๋ฅผ ๋ถ€๊ณผํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. 3. ๋Œ€์‘ ๋ฐฉ์•ˆ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„๊ฐ€ ์ž˜๋ชป ๋ฐ˜์˜๋œ ๊ฒƒ์ด ํ™•์ธ๋  ๊ฒฝ์šฐ, ๋‹ค์Œ๊ณผ ๊ฐ™์€ ์กฐ์น˜๋ฅผ ์ทจํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค: IRS์— ์—ฐ๋ฝํ•˜์—ฌ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„ ๋ณ€๊ฒฝ ์š”์ฒญ ์ „ํ™” (1-800-829-4933) ๋˜๋Š” ์„œ๋ฉด์„ ํ†ตํ•ด ํ•ด๋‹น ๋‚ฉ๋ถ€ ๊ธˆ์•ก์˜ ๊ท€์† ์—ฐ๋„ ์ˆ˜์ •์„ ์š”์ฒญํ•ด์•ผ ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. Form 843 ์ œ์ถœ Penalty ๋ฐ Interest์— ๋Œ€ํ•ด ๊ฐ๋ฉด(Abatement)์„ ์š”์ฒญํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด IRS Form 843์„ ์ž‘์„ฑํ•ด ์ œ์ถœํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์•„๋ž˜๋Š” Penalty ๋ฐ Interest ๊ฐ๋ฉด(Abatement)์„ ์‹ ์ฒญํ•  ๋•Œ ์‚ฌ์šฉํ•˜๋Š” IRS Form 843 ๋งํฌ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค: ๐Ÿ”— IRS Form 843 – Claim for Refund and Request for Abatement (PDF) ๐Ÿ”— Form 843 Instructions (IRS.gov) ...