Congratulations. Now as a married individual, if you are married as of the last day of the year (December 31), you are considered for tax purposes to have been married for the entire tax year. Therefore, you only have the option of filing a either married filing jointly (MFJ) or married filing separately (MFS).
Since you mentioned that your spouse has a Social Security number but has no income (see below*), your tax liability will be lower by filing as married filing jointly because:
- You will get an extra
exemption for your spouse (one exemption for each of you). Please do not also claim your spouse as a dependent. TurboTax will guide you with inputting this information.
- You will get the benefit of
having the your taxable income taxed at a lower marginal rate (as opposed to the higher
marginal tax rate of MFS)
* about your spouse's income - by including your spouse on your tax return, your spouse's worldwide income
will be taxed by the United States. This includes both US and Foreign earned (ie: wages)
and unearned (ie: bank interest) income from all sources. So if your spouse does not have any US income but does have foreign income, that foreign income will need to be included on your married filing jointly tax return (reported in US dollars).
The Internal Revenue Service has no official
exchange rate. In general, use the exchange rate prevailing (i.e., the spot
rate) when you receive the income that needs to be reported. Please refer to the following IRS links for more information about Foreign
Currency and Currency Exchange Rates and Yearly
Average Currency Exchange Rates
