When you are married you can choose to treat your Non Resident Alien spouse as a US Resident for tax purposes even if they don't live in this country. If doing so, your spouse would need to agree to be treated as a US Resident for tax purposes. If your spouse chooses to be treated as an US resident for tax purposes, and you want to file as Married Filing Joint, you can apply for an ITIN when you file your return. You would need to include their income FROM ALL SOURCES WORLDWIDE (not just what they earned in the US) on your return as well and they would be taxed on it. If you choose filing jointly, you will need to print and mail your return along with the W-7 which is an application for an ITIN and any other required documents to the address in the instructions
Or you can continue to do it the way you have been doing it and printing and mailing your return and writing NRA on it. Some people are able to e-file by following these instructions, while others are not, so if you want to attempt to e-file you can do the following.
Make sure you put a check mark in the box that says My spouse is a Non-Resident alien in the My info section. When you get to the end and try to transmit the return, ignore the e-file errors regarding your NRA spouse and select transmit your return. If that does not work you will need to print and mail your return and write NRA (Non Resident Alien) in the space for her SSN.
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