Hi,
I am a fairly new Accountant who specializes in taxes. This is my first instance of this situation. I have a client who was raised in USA but left at some point to live in a new country. He met his wife there and they moved to the USA in 2021. She just received her social security card this year. The husband filled single in 2022 and wants to amend the return to show MFJ now that he has her SSN. Is that possible or can he claim his wife as a dependent to file Head of Household?
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A married taxpayer must always file as married. Either married filing separately, or married filing jointly. Sometimes head of household is allowed, but only if the spouses have lived separately, and the taxpayer cares for a qualifying dependent. (A spouse is never a qualifying dependent for HOH, and HOH is never allowed if the two spouses live together at any time in the last 6 months of the tax year.) You may want to review the dependent and filing status rules in publication 501.
For 2021 and 2022, your client's options were to file as married filing separately (the wife would not file unless she had income, in which case she would also file as MFS and obtain an ITIN), or your client could have filed as married filing jointly by applying for an ITIN for his wife. Single was never an option. Note that when filing MFJ, your client would include all his spouse's income, even if it was earned overseas and subject to tax overseas. Also note that if your client lives in a community property state, half his income should normally be assigned to his spouse when filing MFS.
It sounds like your client needs to file amended returns for 2021 and 2022 to change from single to MFJ or MFS. Yes, your client can amend to MFJ using the new SSN. Because the SSN was not issued prior to the filing deadline (April 18, 2022 or April 18, 2023, I believe), the wife may be ineligible for certain tax benefits, such as EIC, even if they would otherwise qualify.
In fact, going back before 2021, you don't say when the client married, but as you must know, a US citizen is required to file and pay income tax on all their world-wide income, no matter where they live. If the client married before 2021, they would also have been required to file as married for those years (2020, 2019, etc. however far back the marriage goes). Again, either MFS, or MFJ with an ITIN. I can't evaluate the consequences of failing to do this without a lot more information.
@Seanas2252 if you specialize in taxes, step 1 is to read up and become a specialist in the 5 filing statuses.
I guess I am a little taken aback that someone who is paid to do this is asking an anonymous board for advise. does your client know you are doing this?
So, I am dealing with the same situation right now. Will I be able to amend my 2022 tax returns as I filed single cause my spouse was still waiting for her SSN to be assigned from immigrations. If you guys did not know, when you file a permanent resident application, you have to option to apply for a SSN during that time also on the application, which is what we did. So, we could not apply for an ITIN for tax purposes as our application was already pending with immigrations during tax time.
You would need to amend your 2022 tax return to file Married Filing Jointly. Since you were married as of 12/31/22, you were not eligible to file single. You would have needed to file as Married Filing Separately since you couldn't file with your spouse.
@frostykue wrote:
So, I am dealing with the same situation right now. Will I be able to amend my 2022 tax returns as I filed single cause my spouse was still waiting for her SSN to be assigned from immigrations. If you guys did not know, when you file a permanent resident application, you have to option to apply for a SSN during that time also on the application, which is what we did. So, we could not apply for an ITIN for tax purposes as our application was already pending with immigrations during tax time.
You must amend your 2022 return to either married filing jointly or married filing separately. However, if there were tax benefits that required that both spouses have an SSN at the time of filing, those benefits probably won't be paid. (The only thing I can think of is EITC.)
what did you do ? I have the same case I was married in march 2021 , but my husband was not a resident or us citizen , he became an us resident on 2024 , but i have to do my taxes from 2021,2022,2023,2024. I was using an expat page but i dont know if i have to added him an his social? does he count to get the Economic payment ?
1. You haven't filed any tax returns at all- then you can file 2021 and claim the election and move forward from there.
2. The IRS isn't known to give credits for amounts from before the ITIN/SSN was obtained.
The 2021 return is old so you need to file it before April 15.
@taniagov007 wrote:
what did you do ? I have the same case I was married in march 2021 , but my husband was not a resident or us citizen , he became an us resident on 2024 , but i have to do my taxes from 2021,2022,2023,2024. I was using an expat page but i dont know if i have to added him an his social? does he count to get the Economic payment ?
When you are married, you must file as married. Since your spouse was not living in the US, one of your choices was to file as married filing separately, or head of household if you provided care in your home for a qualifying dependent. If you did that, you have no need to file amended returns. Your other option was to file married filing jointly, by declaring your spouse's world-wide income and getting a US tax number (ITIN) for your spouse by filing a W-7 application.
If instead, you filed as "single" for 2021-2023, you need to file amended returns to change that. Now that your spouse has an SSN, you can file the amended returns pretty easily. You still have the same two choices. You can file as married filing separately (amend to change from single to MFS) or you can file jointly (amend to change from single to MFJ). If you file jointly, you must declare all your spouse's world-wide income (if they got income in their home country). You can claim an offsetting tax credit if they paid foreign income tax on the same income.
Your spouse is not eligible for any COVID or other stimulus payments for 2021-2023 because they did not have an SSN at the time, even though they have it now. Turbotax might add it anyway (because the program does not understand the situation) but the IRS is likely to remove it.
thank you so much
awesome , thank you so much for your help.
In my situation, I could not file a W-7 application as my wife already applied for an SSN through her permanent resident card application which was already received and being worked on by immigrations by the time our 2021 taxes were due.
Hi, I have a similar situation. I got married in 2021 and my spouse was a NRA living & working in Europe. My spouse has since moved to the US and now has a SSN. I would like to amend my 2021 filing to MFJ and I understand that worldwide income needs to be reported. However, since my spouse was already subjected to income tax in a different country, do we qualify to submit Form 2555 for Foreign Earned Income Exclusion with the amendment? And if the foreign income is lower than the exclusion limit, does that mean I do not need to change the income amount on the 1040 form?
@trishzilla wrote:
Hi, I have a similar situation. I got married in 2021 and my spouse was a NRA living & working in Europe. My spouse has since moved to the US and now has a SSN. I would like to amend my 2021 filing to MFJ and I understand that worldwide income needs to be reported. However, since my spouse was already subjected to income tax in a different country, do we qualify to submit Form 2555 for Foreign Earned Income Exclusion with the amendment? And if the foreign income is lower than the exclusion limit, does that mean I do not need to change the income amount on the 1040 form?
It's not clear at this point what benefits you think you will gain from filing jointly for 2021. Also, you must file the amended return by April 18, 2025; if you miss that deadline, it will be too late to claim any refunds.
No, you can't use the foreign earned income exclusion, because the whole point of filing jointly when your wife is a non-resident, you have to treat your wife as a US resident for tax purposes. However, you should be able to claim a deduction or credit for the foreign income taxes paid on that income that will now be taxed in the US.
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