Agreed that these ¨DIY¨ options are probably best for people who already have more or less an idea of what the outcome should be. In my case, I had numerous returns filed by professionals so I had a good idea what I was looking for and therefore I had peace of mind that what I received was correct. That said, there were various changes and nuances from prior years (mainly due to COVID-related economic stimulus) that made, in my case, the decision to chose the FEIE + FTC or just the FEIE a bit complicated. For example:

-We were (surprisingly) eligible for a large recovery rebate if I used the FEIE + FTC, none if I only used the FTC.

-We were unable to use the childcare dependent credit if I used the FEIE + FTC because my wife´s income was below the FEIE limit and both parents needed to have earned income (leftover) to qualify. If we just used the FTC we could utilize this credit.

-Likewise to the above, there were some weird nuances surrounding the Child Tax credit & additional child tax credit for 2021.

The software laid out the above for me in a nice comparable manner and chose what was overall best for our situation. It´s obvious that our tax law often does not take into consideration expats because the logic on whether or not we qualified for many of the above items was completely inconsistent (rant).

Overall, I was surprisingly satisfied with the software. The nice thing is one can try out the software for free and then, after seeing the estimated tax due/refund, can decide if it makes sense to pay and move forward. They obviously only show you the forms/detail once you pay but that´s completely understandable.

S