I-864 Affidavit of Support

[mpsolutions 0]

Thank you for this Great Forum.

Here is my situation,

I am a US citizen living abroad, in my birth country, I work there for a local company and Pay local income taxes.

I recently filed I-130 for my wife of 6 years, as we are planning to go back to the US with our 2 kids.

the I-130 petition got accepted, and now they asked us to provide few more documents for the interview date.

My question is regarding the form I-864 Affidavit of support, they want me to fill.

Since I have been paying income taxes in my birth country, I haven't filed US income taxes for few years, so How do I handle this matter.

Also my income is local, so I have no W-2, How can I prove that I am financially able to support my family.

I do have Assets (home, cash in bank...) but they are all locally, My only Asset in the US, is a bank account with few hundred dollars in it.

please advise me on this matter, As I am supposed to provide all the paper work ASAP, to obtain an Interview date.

Best Regards,

[Penguin_ie 5,994]

You should still have filed US taxes- you won't need to pay any, most likely, as you paid local taxes, but you need to file. You can back file with the IRS, it won't take long.

In terms of financially supporting her, your income in Morocco won't count unless it continues when you move back to the USA (intra-company transfer or similar). You can sponsor on assets, and will need 3 times as much as income, so for a household of four (you, wife, 2 kids) that would be about $84'000. Most US embassies want the assets to be US based- can you sell your home, transfer your savings etc to the USA? Your other alternatives are to find a US based greencard holder or US citizen who will co-sponsor, ie stand guarantoor for your wife (I assume the kids are US citizens?), or move to the US now, ahead of your wife, and find a job, then end her paystubs and a letter from your employer.

[Adil & Jeanne 296]

First; need to understand why you were not paying US taxes. Were you made exempt by the type of work by the US government? US citiwens working outside the country are still reauired to pay federal taxes and file each year unless made exempt. If that is the case; you will need notariwed statement saying you are exempt and statements from employer stating your income for the last 3 years. If you did not realiwe you needed to pay taxes you may need help from a lawyer on this issue.

[himher 634]

Please return for advice after you get your taxes filed and paid up. Thats part of enjoying the benefits of US citizenship.

Thank you for this Great Forum.

Here is my situation,

I am a US citizen living abroad, in my birth country, I work there for a local company and Pay local income taxes.

I recently filed I-130 for my wife of 6 years, as we are planning to go back to the US with our 2 kids.

the I-130 petition got accepted, and now they asked us to provide few more documents for the interview date.

My question is regarding the form I-864 Affidavit of support, they want me to fill.

Since I have been paying income taxes in my birth country, I haven't filed US income taxes for few years, so How do I handle this matter.

Also my income is local, so I have no W-2, How can I prove that I am financially able to support my family.

I do have Assets (home, cash in bank...) but they are all locally, My only Asset in the US, is a bank account with few hundred dollars in it.

please advise me on this matter, As I am supposed to provide all the paper work ASAP, to obtain an Interview date.

Best Regards,

Edited August 29, 2011 by himher

[mpsolutions 0]

Ok. I understand that my first step now is to file my back taxes, and get that squared away.

How do I do that rapidly? being out of the country, and having missed the filing deadline.

[Penguin_ie 5,994]

Unless your taxes are complicated, you should be able to file online with a place like TurboTax.

[himher 634]

TurboTax will not allow e-filing without a US address. Since we moved and started working overseas we have been forced to paper-file.

What you can do is get all of your documents / income / basis for currency conversion together, fill out the required information in an online program like H&R Block or Turbotax, then use the "print/file" option so that at least you have your returns properly filled out.

We used Turbotax and the menus are pretty easy. Just report your income as foreign, give the foreign address of the company, and then Turbotax will exempt a large percentage of it anyway. As I recall the exclusion for 2010 was something like $96,000 or some such, after which only the remaining income will be taxable.

It is not likely that you will OWE any taxes, but it is important to file them. Unfortunately paper filing is an 8-week (approx) adventure.

I do not know how to back-file but in your place I would have, in my hand, at least (3) years of filed taxes.

Entering the data does not take long, an hour or two at the most if you have everything ready. Hopefully your family members have social security numbers / ITIN numbers - if not, to file taxes, they cannot be claimed as exemptions unless ITIN numbers are obtained.

US citizenship requires keeping up with all of this as it happens. There is no quick and easy way to fix it if the requirements and obligations were ignored in the first place.

As to assets I recall the one of the requirements of the I-864 is that your assets be US-based or that moving your assets to the US is one of the criteria for establishing intent to set up domicile.

Good luck