Hi

I came to US in Aug 2012 with my wife and 2 yr old kid. My wife doesn't work and has SSN but kid doesn't hae SSN/ITIN. I have 2 options to file.

a) Wait till I pass SPT and become resident alien.
b) File with status as "Married Filing Jointly" but in this case I cannot claim my kid as dependent.

Please advice which option is best.

Tarun,

If you file jointly with your wife, you CAN claim your child, because will have met SPT at the same time you did.

You will need to apply for an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) for your child 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 family, the passports, the SIGNED Forms W-7, and the completed and SIGNED tax return.

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

You would get the ITIN about six weeks after you left the TAC.

The list of the TACs are at the link below:

Taxpayer Assistance Center 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.

Thanks for the reply.

So I cannot claim my kid as dependent that I understood because she doesn't pass SPT.
Now if I claim my wife as dependent can I claim all the same benefits that "resident aliens" do?

You will NOT claim your wife as a dependent. You will file together with her as a Co-Filer.

You have not yet met the SPT as well. But when you DO meet SPT (sometime in May), so will your child.

Thanks for the reply
But just to understood correctly,
a) If I want to file now before I met SPT I can file with my wife as Co-Filer. Can we take standard deduction or itemized deduction in this case?

b) Is it better to file now or after I met SPT.

In order to file jointly, you MUST wait until you meet SPT.

If you file before the SPT date, you file BY YOURSELF as a non-resident alien, and thus pay a MUCH higher tax.

Thanks for the reply. Appreciate it a lot.

To meet SPT I have to wait sometime May, but filing last date is 15th April, how do I approach this?

Also for getting ITIN federal tax return is required. If I file after my SPT meet, how will I get federal tax return in order to apply now?

Submit Form 4868 to request a filing extension until 15 October 2013. Takes maybe five minutes.

If you owe MONEY, you need to send a check with the Form 4868, but if you have a refund due, just the Form 4868 is required.

Submit the federal tax return WITH the Form W-7. when you get the ITIN back, then file the state tax return. Simple, if time-consuming.