How to track the FEIE 330-day test
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion lets US taxpayers abroad exclude a six-figure chunk of earned income — if they pass the physical presence test: at least 330 full days outside the US in any 12-month period. The “any 12-month period” part is what makes it brutal to track by hand.
Why 'any window' is hard
The 12 months do not have to align with a calendar or tax year — you may choose whichever window maximizes the exclusion. That means the honest answer to “do I qualify?” requires checking every possible window, not just the trailing one. Bounded’s US FEIE counter does that for you: it checks every rolling 12-month window, date to date, that reaches into the period shown on the card (“This year” by default) and shows the best one with its dates. To test a window of your own choosing, use the free FEIE physical presence calculator.
The details that bite
- Full days only — a day partially in the US does not count as a day abroad, which is the opposite of most rules’ generosity. Your border-crossing days therefore matter doubly here.
- 330 in 12 months — you get at most 35 US days per window (36 when it spans 29 February); a two-week wedding trip plus a Christmas visit can already break a window.
- Days away, not days anywhere specific — the counter runs in the Days away direction from the United States and its territories (Puerto Rico, Guam and the rest), which are not foreign countries here; which foreign country you were in instead does not matter.
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