[sammat18]

I came SouthCarolina, USA in April and monthly gross income is $4145

1) Can you please help me to understand my Federal tax for year 2012 as well as State tax for 2012?
2) Feb 2013 my family will join with me and I will be continuing here till December 2013, can I able to take benefit of being Resident Alien for the income of 2012 by filing tax returns in April 2013?

Please Help!!

[AtlantaTaxExpert]

Sammat18,

You can file jointly with your wife, even if she remained in your home country. Her physical location is irrelevant. You CANNOT claim your children, however. They MUST spend some time in the U.S. to be claimed.

You will need to apply for Individual Tax Identification Number (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.  The process, done via mail, can take up to three months to complete.

Your wife can also get the photocopy certified with an apostille from the Indian Interior Ministry before she leaves India.

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

If you need my professional help, email me at the email address in my profile if you cannot see it below.