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Level 1
posted Apr 10, 2024 6:24:23 PM

Filing options for married daughter with foreign husband awaiting resident visa?

Been looking at some of the rules on this, but not seeing a simple solution here.

Facts:

1) 25 y.o. daughter lives in my house. She is a legal permanent resident, soon to be eligible for Naturalization.

2) She had 0 income in 2023.

3) She married her long-time boyfriend from her home country in Jan 2023, and has filed for him to immigrate to the USA. Don't expect that to happen until around Jan 2025.

4) He is awaiting his visa, working a factory job in his country.

 

Since my daughter had no income last year, don't think there will be any taxes or EIC to contend with. So decisions on filing status should be able to be made based on what is simplest. Am I right on that?

 

Husband has no SSN or taxpayer ID. Do we even need to consider him (or his limited earnings) before he comes to the USA next year?

 

Just sat down to do her tax return. And in fact, I don't think she would even need to file. But I thought it might be beneficial for her to file even with 0 income, just to have a filed tax return in case any future situations she's in are requesting a past tax return.

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2 Replies
Expert Alumni
Apr 10, 2024 6:45:23 PM

Since she had no income, she is not required to file a tax return.  If you do decide to file a tax return for your daughter, she will file as Married Filing Joint or Married Filing Separate.  No matter what filing status you decide, you will need to apply for an ITIN for your son-in-law.  

 

You will need to apply for his ITIN when you mail in the return. To apply for the ITIN follow the steps below: 

  1. Fill out Form W-7 and attach it to your return, as well as all necessary documentation.
  2. Mail the return to the address specified in the Form W-7 instructions.
  3. TurboTax will give you an error regarding the missing Social Security number. You can ignore the error since you’re printing your return.

Level 1
Apr 10, 2024 8:36:15 PM

Thanks for the reply. As I said, it would have been nice to have her file even though she doesn't need to, just to have it if requested at some future point. She'll have more USCIS dealings for his immigration and her Naturalization for example. But that form W-7 is no simple or quick task. There's a bunch of stuff son-in-law would have to produce (and probably be lost in the process. So I think we will just pass on her even filing this year. 

 

One of the immediate things I was hoping to file for is to have one of the two documents to show residency for her State ID (Real ID compliant) card. But we'll need to go another route for that.