I’m a USA Citizen that got married last year to a Taiwanese Citizen in Taiwan and we have lived in Taiwan for all of the past year (and was planning on filing for the Foreign-Earned-Income-Exclusion credit).
When trying to file my taxes through TurboTax this year, I thought that I could use “Married Filing Separately” but TurboTax is stating that I’ll need to get an ITIN or SSN number for my wife? Since she does not yet have a green card (we haven’t started the application process yet), I assume that this will have to be an ITIN number?
The process to get an ITIN number looked a little involved, so just thought I’d make sure that’s what needs to be done before starting down that road. I assume that she doesn’t have to file a USA tax return as well?
if you file jointly (to get married couple deduction), then need SS# or whatever.
If you want to make it easy, then do not declare her as dependent in 2019.
If she does not have greencard, then can choose to Not declare her as dependent. I do mine through CPA, so I don’t know the process (for above) on TurboTax, etc.
If Turbotax won’t take NRA as an option under the spouse’s social security #, do it anyway, but file on paper rather than efile.
You are required to file as MFS, not single.
Yes, she needs an ITIN. I think you can send the return in with her ITIN left blank (although Turbotax probably won’t allow this) if it’s a filing deadline issue. However, you are super early for filing a 2019 return, so you might as well just get the ITIN first. It’s not that hard.
If you choose to file as “married filing separately” and your spouse is not a US person for tax purposes, then she doesn’t have to file another US tax return for herself.
A tax accountant once told me you could write NRA for non-resident alien in the box, but it won’t work with online forms. You can only do that if you file the printed forms. Otherwise, the ITIN is needed.
Bumping this thread. Since 2022 was the first year being married to my wife, I included her on my taxes and filed jointly. I included a W-7 which I had not really thought much about until last week. I was apparently supposed to send the W-7 along with the rest of my tax forms to the ITIN office. Due to this mistake, I need to resend a new W-7. The old one would’ve failed anyways as I had only included a photocopy of her passport. I’m just learning that they want a physical copy of her passport. Of course I’m not gonna send the actual one. I know AIT can notarize documents…but it seems only U.S. Military personnel can notarize for W-7(unless I’m misunderstanding).
TL;DR - Need to refile W-7. Don’t want to send my wife’s actual passport to the IRS because who the hell knows when it will come back. Has anyone had a notary(AIT or other) notarize spouses’s documents(passport/身份證) for a W-7? Also what other documents did people send?
Update: ope it seems AIT will notarize passports for W-7.