2007 Fun Facts about Christie's Travel

I've spent the evening collecting all my documentation to send to my CPA for my US Taxes. Yes, living abroad I am liable for paying taxes in the US, but there are exceptions and exemptions. The shortest way to explain it is that as long as I can show that I'm paying in the UK as much or more than I'd be paying in the US, I'm cool. Otherwise, Uncle Sam wants the difference.

Part of how they determine whether you are eligible for these exemptions is a dizzying array of facts about how many days you were in the US vs abroad on business, how many days you were in each country in the world, how many of those days were spent working vs. on vacation, and the list goes on. Needless to say this can be an administrative nightmare, particularly for someone with my work and personal travel schedule.

But these details are also necessary for applying for UK citizenship, so if and when that becomes a reality for me, I will be glad to have the grunt work completed. Rest assured I have spreadsheets, colour-coded calendars and all the rest to back this up. Here are some of the more interesting facts I learned about myself for 2007:

• I spent 33 days in the U.S. and all of it was on vacation
• The longest stretch I was in the UK without traveling was only 66 days
• In the month of February, I was only in the UK for 10 days (the rest of the time I was in 5 different countries)
• I only spent 79% of the entire year in the UK
• I spent 15 full days in France, but across 7 different trips (a late Friday night to early Monday morning trip is 2 days, thus more nights were actually spent there)
• I visited 8 different countries, several of them more than once (i.e. Italy, Spain, France)
• The months that I actually never left the UK were January, June, July and October. Those were also the months that I didn't take any holiday.
• Last year I spent Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays all in the States. This probably won't happen again for a long while...

And not surprisingly, I really should get myself to the Embassy to get more passport pages inserted. I have 5 more international trips between now and the end of June!