Hi,

I came to US on November 2012 on L-2 visa. After obtaining my EAD, I started working in US from June 2013. Taxes(federal tax, social security tax, state tax, Medicare) have been deducted from my every paycheck accordingly.

Do I need to file my returns as single or as joint with my spouse who is on L1. Will I be entitled to get returns ? Which is the better option?

Almost for sure, filing jointly is the best option.

You will need to apply for an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) for your wife by submitting Form W-7, and that process underwent some radical procedural changes in 2013. 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.

FIRST ALTERNATIVE: For Indian clients, this certification can be done by the Indian 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. This process, done via mail, can take up to three months to complete. My Indian 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.

SECOND ALTERNATIVE: The IRS also have 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, her passport, the SIGNED Forms W-7, and the completed and SIGNED tax return with your W-2s.

The IRS official verifies the passports, asks a few questions, completes the certification paperwork, checks the Forms W-7 and tax return, then returns the passports with a receipt for the tax return and Forms W-7, which is sent to Austin, Texas for processing.

You leave the TAC with your wife, 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 tax returns are NOT processed at Austin, Texas, but rather forwarded to the regional IRS centers for processing, so the refund will come about one month AFTER you get the ITIN letters.

The list of the TACs are at the link below:

http://www.irs.gov/uac/TAC-Locations...on-is-Provided

THIRD ALTERNATIVE. I am a Certifying Acceptance Agent, and I can certify the passport if the TACs are not close.

You would mail the passport and the SIGNED Form W-7 and SIGNED tax return to me. I would contact you via SKYPE, conduct a brief interview with your spouse, certify the passport, attach the certification to the SIGNED W-7 and sign both documents. I would also sign the tax return, then paperclip the W-7 with certification to the tax return, and then mail them to the IRS ITIN Processing Center in Austin, Texas.

The passport I would mail BACK to you via tracked PRIORITY MAIL, so the passport would be out of your possession for about a week.


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

If the IRS gets the passport, they hold it for about TWO months.

If you want my professional help with this, email me at the email address in my profile.