Solved: Can I make First Year Choice and be the Resident Alien for my spouse to claim "Nonresident Spouse Treated as a Resident"?

ckwangt · Feb 22, 2020 10:11:45 PM

I'm married and just turned from F1 to H1B in Oct 2019. If I made my First Year Choice, I would be considered as Resident Alien at the end of 2019. Based on that, could we elect "Nonresident Spouse Treated as a Resident" and file MFJ over the whole year 2019? Could we claim the standard deduction? I saw that the description in Publication 519 says "If, at the end of your tax year, you are married and one spouse is a U.S. citizen or a resident alien and the other spouse is a nonresident alien, you can choose to treat the nonresident spouse as a U.S. resident." and "If you make this choice, you and your spouse are treated for income tax purposes as residents for your entire tax year."