Hi. Could anyone please help me on how to claim my spouse as dependent on our Income Tax Return for 2006? I had tried to claim my spouse as dependent but my tax software H&R TaxCut wont let me, it says I cant claim my wife as dependent. My spouse got here in Sacramento, CA USA via K1 Visa last April 2006 and had only worked for a month part-time at the mall. She quit her job because she is 5 months pregnant. Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

I cannot tell you how to make Tax Cut allow the exemption but your wife is should be considered a resident alien for tax purposes because she met the "substantial presence" test (lived in the country for more than 173 days).

You can not claim your wife as a dependent.... she is your wife you should file as Married Filing Jointly, that will give you the maximum exemptions available....

Kez

fwaguy,

I had the same problem. H & R block software doesn't support anything to do with resident or non resident spouce. I tried it also.

You might try turbo tax. I used it but our situation was a bit different.


Baileyj96

Good distinction Kez

Because if you ticked the box 'married filing joint' you already got your EXEMPTION for her and then listing her as 'dependant' would be double-dipping.

That's why it stopped you.

PS - I bought TaxCut this year instead of TurboTax because you have to run Windows 2000 or higher to use TurboTax this year. TaxCut sucks - the 'interview' part doesn't ask questions in the 'right' places and cause you to make errors IMO. I used last years TurboTax to check a question I had about early IRA withdrawals because TaxCut broke the questions about such a situation into more than one screen and I had missed a question.

Turbo Tax premium worked fine for us, it filed the 2555 for us as well waiving, his foreign earned income. Tax cut wouldn't do it and they sent me on to some online consultant at a whopping price of $198. Turbo Tax only ran $59.