Hello,

I always have a preparer(Accountant) for my tax and they filed my tax as 1040 instead of 1040NR. My wife recently got an email from DOS saying who should file 1040NR and found out that I should file 1040NR. I have no intention to defraud my filing and I did not what status should I file that time. I even asked long time ago from personnel of IRS what status I am in - resident or non-resident and the answer was resident and discussed this with my tax preparer but she said yes you can file as 1040. Since, I don't know about taxation and that's the main reason why I am paying somebody to prepare my tax. Moving forward, I wanted to make things straight but I don't know where to start.

Please advise.

First, tell me what tax year we are talking about, what your visa status was at that time, what your wife's visa status was at that time, what your home country is and WHEN did you first arrive in the United States (month and year).

Finally, what was your visa status when you first arrived.

With this information, I can then guide you on what to do.

Thank you for your time.

Me and my wife came here 2005 with B1/B2 visa and I've worked out to have J1 Visa without the 2 year return residency requirement. Then she (my wife) got employed in an African Embassy and we got an A-2 visas and I got a work permit as dependent since then I was filing our taxes jointly using 1040. I started filing since 2006, 2007, 2008,2009, and 2010. I am from the Philippines.

Is there away not to pay penalties for reason of getting wrong information about what status should I file and my preparer does not know anything about resident and non-resident filing.

I appreciate any info that you can give me on this matter.

If you filed JOINTLY for those years, you CANNOT correct the error, because the IRS will NOT allow you to change from a joint return.

Once the 15 April filing deadline passes, it is the IRS position that filing a joint return is an IRREVOCABLE decision, even if the return filed was not the correct return. The ONLY exception is if the two joint filers are NOT LEGALLY MARRIED.

BOTTOM LINE: You cannot fix the past year returns, so just start filing correctly for 2012 and beyond.

Thanks a lot!

Glad to help!