You are
considered to have chosen to treat your nonresident alien spouse as a
resident alien if you and your nonresident alien spouse or RDP filed a joint
tax return in a previous year. You are also considered to have chosen to
treat your nonresident alien spouse/RDP as a resident alien if you choose to
treat your nonresident alien spouse/RDP as a resident so you can file a
joint tax return. Furthermore, you are considered to have chosen to treat
your nonresident alien spouse/RDP as a resident alien if you have not
revoked the choice by the extended due date for filing the tax return at
issue.
If a person who
is not a U.S. citizen, an alien, wants to file a tax return, sometimes there
are certain restrictions. If the alien is a nonresident alien, this person
will usually not be able to qualify for the head of household filing status.
This is true, even if you are just a nonresident alien for only part of the
year and even if you meet all the other requirements for the head of
household filing status. The good news, that if your spouse is a nonresident
alien, you are considered unmarried for tax purposes. This is a true
statement if if you want to be considered head of household and benefit from
this filing status. You can also treat your spouse as a resident alien for
tax purposes and filing married filing jointly. These are federal tax rules
to which California conforms.
If you are
married at the end of the year, no one can qualify you for the Head of
Household filing status because you are married. This is true unless you
qualify to be considered unmarried for tax purposes.
You can be
considered unmarried for tax filing purposes. To be considered unmarried for
tax filing purposes is not a choice if you lived with your spouse at any
time during the last six months of the tax year. The basic tax rule is that
if you are married on the last day of the year, you are married. If you are
single, then of course you are considered unmarried for tax filing purposes.
So once you determine that you are indeed able to be considered unmarried
for tax purposes. What then? You want to be able to qualify for Head of
household filing status, so you must also meet the other requirements. You
must meet other tests such as filing a separate tax return, paying more than
half of the upkeep of your home which is the main home for you child for
more than half the year, and you must be able to claim that child as a
dependent by claiming their exemption.
If the person
is your parent, he or she does not have to live with you to qualify you for
the Head of Household filing status.
The person that
qualifies you does not have to be a child. That person can be your parent
whom does not have to live with you in order to qualify you. You do however
have to provide more than half the upkeep of that person’s home. If you pay
for more than half the cost of the upkeep of that person’s home, you have
provided more than half the upkeep. In determining if you provided more than
half the upkeep of the home, you only consider items for the home itself,
such as utilities and repairs. Any expenses for which you have paid for
that persons clothing, education, medical, vacations, life insurance or
transportation are deductible expenses. There expenses are geared toward
calculating if you can claim an exemption for the person instead. For the
home, you include only costs paid for rent, mortgage interest, real estate
taxes, insurance, repairs, utilities and the food eaten in the home. You
must support a home for the qualifying individual and must have paid more
than half of that support for the individual.
If you are
married at the end of the year, you cannot qualify for the Head of Household
filing status if you lived with your husband or wife during any part of the
last six months of the year. You are married, living with your spouse and
therefore you do not meet the requirements to be considered unmarried.
There are many
taxpayers who break the tax rules every year. They contend that no one knows
that their spouse did indeed live with them. Some people go as far as
getting separate addresses in order to try to hide the fact that they lived
together. Sometimes with the help of a little know how from the tax
preparer, the taxpayer goes around the rules and files as he or she wishes
to file. If the taxpayer was married at the end of the year and the spouse
was
