taxes, total income and foreign income in the I864 (merged)

[uluslarci 2]

24 minutes ago, uluslarci said:

My wife reported her foreign earned income with Form 2555 and took the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. This amount gets carried from Form 2555 to Schedule 1 (Form 1040) as a negative number in parentheses and gets subtracted from other additional income on that form. The result, for us, is another negative number. This amount gets carried to Form 1040 Line 6 and, as a negative number, gets subtracted from the wages and salaries reported on the 1040. On our jointly filed return, with me -the applicant- earning US income and the other -my wife, petitioner and the US citizen- earning foreign income, the amount on Line 6, "total income," comes out very low. It seems strange to subtract the foreign income from all the other income to come to the total income. Is this correct? 

 

When we put her total income, which is our total income as stated on the 1040 Line 6, in the I-864, it creates a number which does not line up with W-2 and 1042S that we submitted (it is much lower). Is this normal? As long as the amount lines up with everything on all our tax forms, will the NVC accept it?

 

 

And also should she report her foreign income on line 1 of the 1040? 

She reported it on form 2555 only.

Also, it shows up on Line 6 of 1040 via Schedule I as a negative amount as I said in my previous post. 

[millefleur 5,039]

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[pushbrk 12,212]

10 hours ago, uluslarci said:

And also should she report her foreign income on line 1 of the 1040? 

She reported it on form 2555 only.

Also, it shows up on Line 6 of 1040 via Schedule I as a negative amount as I said in my previous post. 

This is an immigration forum.  Use tax software or a tax professional to amend the applicable tax returns.  That's how you clean up the mess.  Take care of the tax mess first, then submit correct forms and documentation.  There's no quick fix.

[uluslarci 2]

We are amending our tax return so we are filing the 1040X.

1040X does not have a "total income" line like the 1040 does. But it has an Adjusted Gross Income line.

Is it OK to put this amount in the total income information of the I-864? Any idea or experience?

Thanks.

Edited May 27, 2019 by uluslarci

[pushbrk 12,212]

2 hours ago, uluslarci said:

We are amending our tax return so we are filing the 1040X.

1040X does not have a "total income" line like the 1040 does. But it has an Adjusted Gross Income line.

Is it OK to put this amount in the total income information of the I-864? Any idea or experience?

Thanks.

Which year(s) are you talking about?  Are you trying to amend the tax return yourself without appropriate software or professional assistance?  You made this mess?  Are you confident you can clean it up yourself?  Are you sure you know ALL the mistakes you made?

 

Does the AGI number look to be as low as you think it should be?

[uluslarci 2]

 

 

1

40 minutes ago, pushbrk said:

Which year(s) are you talking about?  Are you trying to amend the tax return yourself without appropriate software or professional assistance?  You made this mess?  Are you confident you can clean it up yourself?  Are you sure you know ALL the mistakes you made?

 

Does the AGI number look to be as low as you think it should be?

We are just talking about the most recent year -2018- taxes. We are not submitting the tax documents for 2017 and 2016 anyway. And we are just talking about my wife's taxes. Joint sponsor's don't have this problem.

 

Alright, so apparently I need to explain why I am trying to find an answer here. I wish a software or a professional could help us but softwares don't work for us because of our specific situation: my wife, the US citizen who makes foreign income and lives abroad and I, the applicant who makes US income and lives abroad; and we've been filing jointly since we got married 2 years ago. We attached a statement to file jointly and I had already an SSN number because I was already in the US when we got married. Long story short, softwares do not work for our case. They are not designed for that complicated situations. There is no appropriate software. Otherwise, we would not bother ourselves. Professional assistance did not work either. We tried to call a couple of them and could not get coherent and confident answers. Both of us are not in the US. Maybe it would be easier if we were in the US but we just cannot keep spending tons of money for generic and useless answers on the phone. Oh, in the meantime, we cannot get tax transcripts online because IRS has a problem with foreign addresses in case someone again brings this up. So it is also not an option. Needless to say, NVC is not accessible on the phone. We tried to call them tons of time. I am really wondering how people here are able to talk to someone on the phone. 

 

We think that under those circumstances, we did our best and we solved ALL the problems in the tax document. There was mainly one problem anyway. It just affects all the tax forms we submitted since the calculation ends up being different although the refund we've gotten won't change. The other problem was about the I-864. My wife put her own personal income in the total income question instead of writing our all jointly filed income. So we are only fixing it. 

 

AGI number now looks normal. As I said before, we've already gotten our tax refund. Nothing will change. This is just for correcting the data with IRS and get over the confusion with the NVC officer who asked my wife's W-2 for the wrong data there.

 

So we have two options now

 

1. to write AGI that is in 1040X for the total income and adding a sentence to our cover letter explaining it. 

2. to write total income, which is slightly different than the AGI, by adding a corrected 1040 just to show the total income and again adding a sentence to our cover letter to explain it. But I don't think we should submit another 1040 for solely this purpose, which can cause another confusion. After all, 1040X is going to IRS and it is the official thing now. 

 

So, again, if I've clarified what I am asking, any idea or experience regarding this?

 

[pushbrk 12,212]

If the AGI number is the only option and it looks correct based on our discussion, that's what you use.