I am a US citizen living abroad and married to a Non-Resident Alien.
I have filed taxes as HoH status before as we have dependent children.
However, we're needing to get an ITIN for my spouse for bank and insurance reasons and are considering filing MFJ this year.
I have researched this, and I understand we can file jointly and elect to treat my spouse as a resident for tax purposes and report his worldwide income. Since we live abroad, we can also take the foreign earned income exclusion up to the $107,600 limit for 2020. Since his worldwide income is less than this limit, there is actually no change in our total taxes. In fact, our taxes are the same whether I file as HoH or if we file as MFJ since most of our income is excluded with the foreign income exclusion.
Am I correct so far? Are there any other implications of electing to treat a spouse as a resident that I'm missing?
Thank you!
