TL;DR — Key Takeaways
- →YTD saving = your actual abroad tax minus what you'd have paid at home, day-weighted by trip log.
- →The projected annual figure extends your current pattern to a full year estimate.
- →Monthly breakdown shows which months and countries drove the most saving.
- →Country comparison normalizes each destination to an annualized net income figure.
- →If you see a setup prompt, your income preference or trip log is missing — fix those first.
The Tax Savings Ledger compares what you're actually paying in taxes abroad against what you'd have paid if you'd stayed home. This tutorial walks through reading your ledger and understanding the numbers.
What you'll have by the end: a clear view of your year-to-date tax saving and a monthly breakdown of how it's distributed.
Prerequisites
Your dashboard preferences need to include your income and home country. You also need at least some trips logged in the Residency Tracker so the ledger has day-weighted data to work with.
Step 1 — Navigate to the Savings Ledger
From the sidebar, click Tax Savings Ledger. If preferences and trips are set up, you'll see your year-to-date saving at the top.
If you see a setup prompt instead, either your income isn't set or you haven't logged trips yet. Complete those steps and return.
Savings Ledger main page showing the YTD savings summary card at the top with a dollar figure and a green positive delta indicator
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Step 2 — Read Your YTD Savings
The headline is your total year-to-date tax saving vs. your home country baseline. Below it is the projected annual saving — what the full year looks like if your current pattern continues.
Both calculate as: what you'd have owed at home (day-weighted) minus what you actually owed in the countries you've been in.
Close-up of the YTD and projected annual saving figures, with the home country baseline label visible below
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Step 3 — Review the Monthly Breakdown
Below the headline is the monthly breakdown table. Each row shows the month, the country you were primarily in, your tax owed in that country, the equivalent home-country tax, and the monthly delta.
Months in a low-tax country show a large positive delta. Months in a higher-tax country show a smaller one.
Monthly breakdown table showing five or six months of data with country flags, tax amounts, and delta columns
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Step 4 — Compare Countries
At the bottom is a country comparison view. For each country you've spent time in, it shows annualized net income in that country vs. your home country. This normalizes different stays to a full-year equivalent for easy side-by-side comparison.
Country comparison section showing two or three rows with country flags, annualized net income figures, and the home country as a reference baseline
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What's Next
The savings ledger tells you the result. The FEIE / FTC Optimizer helps US citizens make that result official at filing time. The Mid-Year Move Calculator shows what happens when you change the destination inputs.