Hi I was in ( H1B) US, 154 days in 2012.. I came to us on jul 31, 2012. And my spouse(H4) 112 days. My total taxable wages 24566 and Fedral withholding 2351. And I am in Florida , so no state tax withhold.
As I am enquire one CPA told , he can get the refund near close to Fed.Withhold (ie 2300$) and another Tax preparer said its only around 300$.
Please some help me.
Thanks in advance.

It is probably most advantageous for you to file jointly with your wife, filing Form 1040 with Form 1116 to claim the Foreign Tax Credit.  Form 1116 is required because you must claim ALL world-wide income earned in 2012, and the Form 1116 allows you to claim a credit for the income taxes paid to your home country. Note that you must WAIT until 9 May 2013 before you can file this joint return.

You will need to apply for an Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITIN) for your wife by submitting Form W-7, and that process has undergone some radical procedural changes this past year.  Instead of the simple notarization process, the IRS now requires that your home country certify the photocopy of your passport as a true copy.  This is due to rampant fraud in the ITIN submission process.  The notaries simply cannot tell the difference between a fake passport and the genuine passport.

This certification can be done by the Indian (I assume you are from India) embassy in Washington, D.C. or at one of the consulates in San Francisco, Chicago, Houston or New York.  Assuming you do NOT want to drive there, you need to call the nearest consulate and arrange to have this process done via the mail.  Since you must wait until May to file, you have time to get this done (the process, done via mail, can take up to three months to complete). My clients to date have had the best results by mail with the San Francisco consulate, getting the certified passport photocopies in less than 3 weeks.

Also, the IRS recently announced the opening of Tax Assistance Centers through which you may be able to have the passport verified as genuine, then submit the tax return and Form W-7 IN PERSON to be forwarded to the ITIN Processing Center in Austin, Texas for processing , without having to get the photocopies certified by your home country consulate.

You go to the TAC with your wife , the passports, the SIGNED Forms W-7, and the completed and SIGNED tax return.

You leave the TAX with your wife , the passports and a receipt for the Forms W-7 and the tax return.

The list of the TACs are at the link below:

Taxpayer Assistance Center Locations Where In-Person Document Verification is Provided (http://www.irs.gov/uac/TAC-Locations-Where-In-Person-Document-Verification-is-Provided)

The alternative is to mail in the actual passports themselves, something most of my clients are reluctant to do.

The refunds cited by the CPA/tax preparer cannot be accurate, because neither one asked about your home country income and taxes paid.

If you believe that you will need professional help filing this year, this IS what I do. Please double-click on my name (Atlanta Tax Expert) above to access my profile. You will find my email address in the signature portion of the profile (scroll down to the BOTTOM of the page).

Thanks for the answer.. But if I wait till may 9, 2013 also, I can't meet the SPT for 2012 right? (Since I am going to file my 2012 taxes on May 2013) so still I can file as NR. Please correct me, if I am wrong..

You CAN file as a non-resident alien if you wish, but you pay a much higher tax than by filing jointly.