Hello all,
I’m hoping to get advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation.
I’m a U.S. citizen and I married my wife who is from Brazil in after she entered the U.S. on a K-1 visa. She has a Social Security number, but we have not yet filed for Adjustment of Status.
I’m now trying to file my 2025 taxes. From what I understand, she is still considered a nonresident alien for tax purposes unless we make the election to treat her as a resident and file Married Filing Jointly.
A few key points
She did not work in the U.S of course since she does not have authorization.
Before coming here, she worked in Brazil as a self-employed lawyer
She does not have a formal tax return, W-2, wage statement, or anything like that from Brazil
Her income was mostly from client payments/bank transfers, and some payments may have already had Brazilian taxes withheld
TurboTax seems to allow the resident-spouse election path, but then says we cannot e-file and would have to mail the return
My questions are:
Has anyone here actually filed Married Filing Jointly in a case like this, with a K-1 spouse who had an SSN but was still a nonresident alien for tax purposes at year-end?
Did you make the election to treat your spouse as a U.S. resident for tax purposes?
How did you handle the spouse’s small foreign self-employment income if there were no formal tax documents?
Did you use TurboTax or another software, or did you end up needing a CPA/EA?
For AOS purposes, did you feel MFJ was worth it, or did you file MFS the first year and then MFJ later?
I’m trying to do this correctly, but I also want to keep things as clean as possible for our upcoming AOS filing.
Thanks in advance to anyone who has been through this.
