330-Day Rule and the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion

The 330-day rule under the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion requires you to be physically present in one or more foreign countries for at least 330 full days during any 12 consecutive months. Meet it, and for 2026 you can exclude up to $132,900 of foreign earned income from U.S. federal tax.¹ The test is mathematical. It counts days, not intentions. But the definition of a “full day,” the choice of your 12-month window, and a separate tax home requirement decide whether the count actually holds up.

The rule sits in IRC Section 911(d)(1)(B), and it’s available to both U.S. citizens and U.S. resident aliens.² The 330 days don’t have to be consecutive. You can move between foreign countries, and every qualifying day in any of them adds to the total.³ What matters is the running total inside your chosen 12-month period.

Miss the threshold by a single day and the exclusion is gone for that period. For someone earning above the limit, that can mean a federal tax bill of $30,000 or more. Precise day-tracking isn’t optional.

What Counts as a Full Day

A full day is a continuous 24-hour period from midnight to midnight, and you must spend that entire period in a foreign country for it to count.⁴

Travel days between the U.S. and a foreign country almost never qualify. Time spent on or over international waters doesn’t count as time in a foreign country either.⁴ If you leave a foreign country at 10 PM and arrive in the U.S. the next morning, neither day meets the midnight-to-midnight standard. A single round trip home can cost you two to four qualifying days depending on flight times and layovers.

A U.S. stopover between two foreign locations is treated differently. If you’re in the United States for less than 24 hours in transit, it doesn’t count against you. Exceed 24 hours, and the transit time drops out of your count.⁴

U.S. territories are not foreign countries for this test. Days in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, or the Northern Mariana Islands don’t add to your total. The IRS defines “foreign country” to exclude U.S. possessions and territories for Section 911 purposes.

Keep a detailed travel log with departure and arrival dates, and cross-reference it against your passport stamps. The IRS can verify these dates, and mismatches between claimed days and actual travel records are a common audit trigger.

Choosing Your 12-Month Period

The 12-month window doesn’t have to match the calendar year. You can select any 365-day stretch that begins or ends during the tax year you’re filing for, and this flexibility is one of the most useful features of the test.¹

The strategy is straightforward. Look at your travel dates and find the 12-month block with the fewest U.S. days. If you flew home for two weeks in July and a week in December, a period running from March to March might capture more qualifying days than the calendar year would. Shifting the window by a few days sometimes turns 329 into 330.

Periods can overlap across tax years. Someone who moved abroad in April 2025 might use an April 2025 to April 2026 period for the 2025 return and a different window for 2026. The period you choose then drives how much of the annual exclusion cap is available, because only the portion of the period falling within the calendar year counts for proration.

Your Tax Home Must Also Be Abroad

Hitting 330 days isn’t enough. The statute also requires your tax home to be in a foreign country during the period you’re claiming the exclusion.²

Your tax home is your regular or principal place of business, not necessarily where your family lives. If you don’t have a fixed place of business because of the nature of your work, your tax home defaults to wherever you regularly live. The controlling rule: you are not considered to have a tax home in a foreign country for any period when your abode is in the United States.⁵

Being temporarily present in the U.S., or even maintaining a dwelling here, doesn’t automatically place your abode in the United States.⁵ But if your primary personal and economic ties stay stateside, with family in your U.S. home and your bank accounts and voter registration domestic, the IRS will argue your abode never left. This is where most disputes arise, and it’s the issue that sinks otherwise valid claims.

Proration When Your Period Splits a Tax Year

The 2026 exclusion cap is $132,900 per person, and the amount adjusts annually for inflation.¹ Married couples who both work abroad can each claim it separately, potentially excluding up to $265,800 combined.

When your qualifying 12-month period covers only part of the tax year, you prorate the cap. The Form 2555 formula is:⁶

$132,900 × (qualifying days in the tax year ÷ total days in the year)

If 200 of your qualifying days fall within the 2026 calendar year, the math is $132,900 × (200 ÷ 365), or roughly $72,822. That becomes your ceiling for the year. Part VII of Form 2555 walks through the calculation line by line.⁶ An overstated day count produces an overstated exclusion, and that draws IRS scrutiny.

When War or Unrest Cuts the Period Short

If war, civil unrest, or similar conditions force you to leave a foreign country before you reach 330 days, you may still qualify. Under IRC Section 911(d)(4), the Treasury Department can waive the time requirement when it determines, after consulting with the State Department, that conditions in a specific country prevented normal business operations.²

To qualify for the waiver, you must have been physically present or a bona fide resident of the affected country when conditions deteriorated, and you must show that you could reasonably have met the 330-day requirement absent the disruption.² If the waiver is granted, you’re treated as having met the physical presence test for the period you were actually in the country.

The IRS publishes waivers through annual revenue procedures that identify specific countries and effective dates. Rev. Proc. 2026-16 covers countries including Ukraine, Haiti, Lebanon, Iraq, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali, each with a specific departure date on or after which the waiver applies. These lists change as conditions do, so check the current year’s revenue procedure before filing. Employer evacuation orders, State Department travel advisories, and flight records showing your departure date all strengthen a claim.

Filing and Extensions

You must file a U.S. federal tax return to claim the exclusion, using Form 2555 attached to Form 1040. Even if the exclusion drops your taxable income below the standard filing threshold, you still have to file to claim it.

If you live outside the United States and your main place of business is abroad, you get an automatic two-month extension. The filing deadline moves from April 15 to June 15, and no form is required to claim it. Any tax you owe still accrues interest from April 15, so if you expect a balance due, pay it by the original deadline.⁷

If you’re close to the 330-day threshold but won’t reach it before the extended deadline, file Form 2350. It’s the extension designed specifically for taxpayers waiting to qualify for the FEIE, and it buys time to finish meeting either the physical presence test or the bona fide residence test before you have to file.⁸

1
Internal Revenue Service. Figuring the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 911 – Citizens or Residents of the United States Living Abroad
3
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 54, Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad
4
Internal Revenue Service. Foreign Earned Income Exclusion – Physical Presence Test
5
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 2555
6
Internal Revenue Service. Form 2555, Foreign Earned Income
7
Internal Revenue Service. Automatic 2-Month Extension of Time to File
8
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 2350, Application for Extension of Time to File U.S. Income Tax Return