Question about nonresident spouse filing.

[ZaiKajou]

  My spouse and I will be filing jointly, and my spouse is Canadian, so we will be going through all the required steps for an ITIN, and mailing in the return with the required documents, etc. 

My question is that since my spouse also gets scholarship stuff for their college, but is Canadian and lives and works in Canada only (they have no dual citizenship, only Canadian), and since the scholarship is Canadian and for their Canadian college, would that have to be claimed on a joint US tax return?

I know how to do the income section since my spouse only has a job and gets a T4 for income, but I wasn't quite sure about the scholarship items, I'd only seen anything mentioned for US-related items for that.

[MinhT1]

As you are filing jointly with your nonresident alien spouse, you have made the election to consider her as a resident alien for tax purposes.

Therefore, she is required to report her worldwide income, and the scholarship received in Canada has to be reported and is taxable just like a scholarship received in the US.

Please read this IRS document for more information.

[ZaiKajou]

Thank you for the information on that one.

I was a bit confused on that one because reading how it works for a US citizen, if it's all used to pay for college/degree, it doesn't have to be reported and isn't taxable unless that's different for a nonresident being treated as a resident for tax purposes, or I may have just overlooked that when I was reading through.

[RobertB4444]

No, that is correct.  If the scholarship is one hundred percent used for tuition and fees then it isn't taxable.  It still has to be reported, however, as does the amount of tuition.

@ZaiKajou