[Advice Request] RFE on I-864 for Marriage-based AoS

[ChewBarka 3]

Hi folks!

 

We moved to the U.S. last year, and am married to a U.S. citizen, for a few years.

 

In our I-485, as supporting evidence for I-864, we included our IRS tax TRANSCRIPT only because we thought that’s better than a tax RETURN (1040, W-2, 1099,…)

 

The RFE seems to want the complete tax return information. 
Any thoughts on why would this be the case?

 

We filed our taxes as married filing jointly.

The sponsoring spouse did not work last year/latest tax year but, beneficiary spouse did and above the threshold. It’s just us 2 in our household.

 

So we didn’t file an I-864A. Do we have to?

 

Any thoughts/ideas on how best to respond would be appreciated!

 

Thanks! 🙂

[JeanneAdil 7,021]

Send what is asked for

Complete tax return from IRS (mine was 11 pages and some of them did not apply to me but immigration can not guess on that -they must see it)

sign the I 864 by pen -black inn is best

include all W 2's and any 1099's

give a number of all living in house  so they can calculate needed income

 

if u do not meet the  125% of poverty income ,  include all the info as stated with that person's I 864

 

[Crazy Cat 44,107]

***Topic moved to Adjustment of Status forum***

[W199 456]

Yes, a tax return transcript is much better than sending in the actual tax return with all the forms.

 

What year tax transcript did you send in? It askes for the current year, e.g. Tax year ending 2024 which is filed by April 2025. 

 

Note, there are enough issues and complications which you appear confused about and likely not to get perfectly correct. Since you already got this one RFE that you might want to get some processional help with, e.g. lawyer or agency, otherwise you risk getting denied and starting over. 

Edited June 7 by W199

[pushbrk 13,558]

On 6/7/2025 at 9:58 AM, ChewBarka said:

 

Hi folks!

 

We moved to the U.S. last year, and am married to a U.S. citizen, for a few years.

 

In our I-485, as supporting evidence for I-864, we included our IRS tax TRANSCRIPT only because we thought that’s better than a tax RETURN (1040, W-2, 1099,…)

 

The RFE seems to want the complete tax return information. 
Any thoughts on why would this be the case?

 

We filed our taxes as married filing jointly.

The sponsoring spouse did not work last year/latest tax year but, beneficiary spouse did and above the threshold. It’s just us 2 in our household.

 

So we didn’t file an I-864A. Do we have to?

 

Any thoughts/ideas on how best to respond would be appreciated!

 

Thanks! 🙂

It seems some mistakes were made.  No need for I-864a when the income is coming from the intending immigrant.  Seems the I-864 has errors and you sent a "tax transcript" not a "Tax Return Transcript".  How did you document the beneficiary's income?  How did you calculate it?

 

First, become an A-Student of the I-864 instructions and the form itself, then see your errors and correct them.

[ChewBarka 3]

Thanks to everyone for your advice! It was helpful.

 

We submitted the response to the RFE yesterday (by uploading it online).

 

We included a cover letter of explanation, a corrected and signed I-864, complete tax return submission (we filed as married filing joint) - thanks @JeanneAdil, tax return transcript (thanks @pushbrk! I think that was one of the main issues, I am new to all the IRS "transcripts", so found the RETURN TRANSCRIPT when we checked again. We submitted it seems an "Account Transcript" but it showed up after we had submitted our tax return...), beneficiary spouse's W-2, employment verification letter, and paystubs along with sponsoring spouse's employment verification letter and paystubs so far. We also included our lease document (with both our names on it) showing our primary residence and being members of the same household, and an old and latest utility bill (also with both our names on it). 

 

The issue on the I-864 was, we filled it out using Adobe but when printing Revu/Bluebeam application was used which appended zeros to the number of household members and I can't believe I did not catch that... (it was a lot of work to gather all the documents, evidences, etc. to file initially) anyways, hope this helps anyone down the road. Here's what it looked like, FYI: 

 

Yes, a lawyer I spoke to threw me off about needing an I-864A, apparently due to the way I filled the I-864, which did not seem to make sense to me, per the instructions. To me, it seemed because of the "boilerplate" language they have to include but better to ask when in doubt than assume. Per pg. 2 on I-864A (ver. 10/17/24) instructions:

 

and pg. 10 Form I-864 instructions (ver. 10/17/24), and as on the form itself Item 14, Part 6, pg. 6:

 

Something I noticed was it seems the USCIS officer was nice enough (as it seems to me at least) to highlight/bold the information they are looking for.