Greetings, TurboTax Community. I appreciate your feedback, Opus 17, TomD8, and pk!
I am an American citizen. I return to Manila in two weeks to conduct an in-person Catholic wedding ceremony to remove all reservations of my love for my foreign wife. This will be my second visit to the Philippines, my wife's homeland.
I remain undecided how to file - either "Married, Filing Separately" or "Married, Filing Jointly." While the former is the 'status quo' allowing for e-File, the latter slightly reduces my taxable income (I will remain at 12% in both scenarios). No matter which is chosen, the economic data will be nearly exclusively my own (my wife has worked as an undocumented live-in caretaker her entire life with no tax reporting requirements due to her income being egregiously low). When I die, as my beneficiary, my wife will then have cause to file a tax return in her name; if all that is needed to file is an ITIN, then perhaps now is the time to apply for her ITIN while accepting that I must mail all federal and state income tax returns from this point forward?
