I-134

[MikeA 0]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Edited May 21, 2009 by MikeA

[BrianandMerne 3]

if you would just add your son as a co - sponsor, you would be fine

[wasabi 4]

if you would just add your son as a co - sponsor, you would be fine

I am not sure if this is true. Isn't it that a co sponsor themselves must meet the requirements? If the son himself meets the requirements he could be the cosigner but I don't know if you can do some type of cumulative affidavit to meet the req.

[DEDixon 39]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Co-sponsor is frowned upon at the USEM. I'm not saying it hasn't been done, but it has been said many times that Manila isn't so friendly when it comes to co-sponsor. Also, using your son as a co-sponsor for your fiancee probably is.... can't find the right word but I'm not sure what the CO will think about this. I'm not saying you'll be denied, the CO can simply make approval difficult for you.

If you are at the beginning of the process, it would be better to get a second job to supplement your income.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Not for the I-134.

If your son wants to co=sponsor he can BUT he must make enough on his own. For the I-134 they do not combine incomes. For the I-864 they will if you live in the same household and he files an I-864a.

By the way, you do not submit your "year to date" income. You make a statement of your CURRENT annual income. GROSS, before tax. Take your year to date, divide by 5 then multiply the result by 12. This is your current GROSS annual income, that is the number to use in your answer for the I-134. Verify this with check stubs, bank deposits, and/or employer letter. Attach your 2008 tax return. You're done. If you currently earn more than $18, 212 you should be fine

[rebeccajo 14]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Not for the I-134.

If your son wants to co=sponsor he can BUT he must make enough on his own. For the I-134 they do not combine incomes. For the I-864 they will if you live in the same household and he files an I-864a.

By the way, you do not submit your "year to date" income. You make a statement of your CURRENT annual income. GROSS, before tax. Take your year to date, divide by 5 then multiply the result by 12. This is your current GROSS annual income, that is the number to use in your answer for the I-134. Verify this with check stubs, bank deposits, and/or employer letter. Attach your 2008 tax return. You're done. If you currently earn more than $18, 212 you should be fine

There are different ways of calculating annual income. They depend on the manner in which a person is paid - hourly or salary.

[payxibka 10,045]

Moving to the consulate forum

US Embassy and Consulate Discussion

You are almost there and now you have to deal with the embassy. This is the place to post your experiences or questions related to this last step before moving to the US. Topics relating to I-134's, packets sent from consulate and medical & police certificates should be posted here.

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Not for the I-134.

If your son wants to co=sponsor he can BUT he must make enough on his own. For the I-134 they do not combine incomes. For the I-864 they will if you live in the same household and he files an I-864a.

By the way, you do not submit your "year to date" income. You make a statement of your CURRENT annual income. GROSS, before tax. Take your year to date, divide by 5 then multiply the result by 12. This is your current GROSS annual income, that is the number to use in your answer for the I-134. Verify this with check stubs, bank deposits, and/or employer letter. Attach your 2008 tax return. You're done. If you currently earn more than $18, 212 you should be fine

There are different ways of calculating annual income. They depend on the manner in which a person is paid - hourly or salary.

What's wrong with Gary's method? It calculates the average per month, and extrapolates this for the remainder of the year. The only presumption it makes is that the worker has received a more or less stable income since the beginning of the year.

[deomaya 0]

my fiance has no money in the bank, he wasnt able to save... but his income 32, 000 USD annually, he has life insurance and he own real state with mortgage, he's still supporting his daughter ... do u think everything is enough in filing I 134?

[rebeccajo 14]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Not for the I-134.

If your son wants to co=sponsor he can BUT he must make enough on his own. For the I-134 they do not combine incomes. For the I-864 they will if you live in the same household and he files an I-864a.

By the way, you do not submit your "year to date" income. You make a statement of your CURRENT annual income. GROSS, before tax. Take your year to date, divide by 5 then multiply the result by 12. This is your current GROSS annual income, that is the number to use in your answer for the I-134. Verify this with check stubs, bank deposits, and/or employer letter. Attach your 2008 tax return. You're done. If you currently earn more than $18, 212 you should be fine

There are different ways of calculating annual income. They depend on the manner in which a person is paid - hourly or salary.

What's wrong with Gary's method? It calculates the average per month, and extrapolates this for the remainder of the year. The only presumption it makes is that the worker has received a more or less stable income since the beginning of the year.

Nothing wrong with the method if the sponsor is a salaried individual. Or a salesperson earning commissions. But persons paid by the hour (common) or a bi-weekly salary (rare) would actually find themselves cheated if they use Gary's method.

If you are paid a monthly salary then you take your gross monthly wage and multiply it by twelve.

If you are paid a bi-weekly salary, you multiply that gross amount x 26.

Persons paid by the hour should multiply their hourly wage x the number of hours worked per week x 52.

Persons who earn consistent overtime income should show their base wage as one figure and overtime averaged as another.

"Extrapolation" shouldn't be the goal. Accuracy should be.

Edited May 22, 2009 by rebeccajo

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

I am sponsoring my fiance from the Philippines. I may have trouble meeting the income requirements for the I-134. My question is this. I will submit my year to date income, but can I also combine my son's income who lives with me? Can you combine family members income if they live in the same houehold to meet minimum income requirements?

Not for the I-134.

If your son wants to co=sponsor he can BUT he must make enough on his own. For the I-134 they do not combine incomes. For the I-864 they will if you live in the same household and he files an I-864a.

By the way, you do not submit your "year to date" income. You make a statement of your CURRENT annual income. GROSS, before tax. Take your year to date, divide by 5 then multiply the result by 12. This is your current GROSS annual income, that is the number to use in your answer for the I-134. Verify this with check stubs, bank deposits, and/or employer letter. Attach your 2008 tax return. You're done. If you currently earn more than $18, 212 you should be fine

There are different ways of calculating annual income. They depend on the manner in which a person is paid - hourly or salary.

What's wrong with Gary's method? It calculates the average per month, and extrapolates this for the remainder of the year. The only presumption it makes is that the worker has received a more or less stable income since the beginning of the year.

Nothing wrong with the method if the sponsor is a salaried individual. Or a salesperson earning commissions. But persons paid by the hour (common) or a bi-weekly salary (rare) would actually find themselves cheated if they use Gary's method.

If you are paid a monthly salary then you take your gross monthly wage and multiply it by twelve.

If you are paid a bi-weekly salary, you multiply that gross amount x 26.

Persons paid by the hour should multiply their hourly wage x the number of hours worked per week x 52.

Persons who earn consistent overtime income should show their base wage as one figure and overtime averaged as another.

"Extrapolation" shouldn't be the goal. Accuracy should be.

Ok, I see where you're going, but unless you earn a fixed salary then it's not possible to do anything else but extrapolate at this point. How much an hourly worker will earn in the year depends not only on how much they are paid per hour, but also on how many hours they work. I don't know about other states, but the majority of hourly workers in California don't work the same number of hours every week, and most work less than 40 hours per week. This is because when you hit the magic "40" hours per week you're considered full time, and the employer has to provide benefits like medical insurance. Many employers would rather hire two part time workers rather than one full time worker because it costs them less. A lot of employees don't know how many hours they'll be working in the coming week until their employer posts the schedule for the week. Some employees don't know with certainty even then because they could be called in if another employee calls in sick. Hourly workers are often not paid for sick days.

Your math might be a little more accurate if the year to date income includes a partial month's pay, but it doesn't account for the fact that pay periods are rarely aligned evenly with the calendar year, so you could still be off by a whole paycheck. A more accurate method would be to take the year to date earnings, divide by the number of paychecks received so far this year, and then multiply by the number of paychecks in the full calendar year. It's still just an educated guess because it presumes the average per future paycheck will be the same as the average per previous paycheck.

For salaried workers it's generally a lot easier and more accurate because they are usually paid for sick days, and usually not paid overtime. You could probably nail it down very closely if you do as you suggest and multiply the pay per period by the number of pay periods per year. The only variable in this scenario is that pay periods rarely align evenly with the calendar year, so you might be off by a paycheck.

I'm a salaried worker, but the best I can do is project a minimum. I get annual bonuses for both merit and profit sharing, and these vary widely from year to year, but can be as much as 40% of my base salary. No, I don't work for AIG!

My bonuses are paid once per year, so any averaging method to calculate my annual income is going to be too low if taken before I get my annual bonus, and too high if taken after.

My pay is based on an annual salary rate. I'm paid 1/26th of this amount bi-weekly. I'm always paid on a Friday, so the number of paychecks per year depends on the alignment of the pay periods with the calendar year. My pay stub also lists an hourly rate, but this is because the payroll company has no other way to do the accounting. The hourly rate it lists is my annual salary divided by 52, and divided again by the number of hours in my company's standard work week. My pay stub always lists the standard work week as the number of hours worked per week, regardless how many hours I actually worked. I don't get overtime.

[rebeccajo 14]

Jim -

You are hitting the nail exactly on the head when you give examples of how WHEN a person is paid matters, etc.

The examples I gave to you are the methods used by FNMA/FHLMC/FHA/VA for calculating income. I used these methods when I was an underwriter for a couple of different mortgage companies. They tend to give the worker a conservative 'benefit of the doubt' for income.

True many hourly workers do not get 40 hours per week. But in most cases they are guaranteed a minimum number. As an underwriter we would have used the guaranteed minimum.

I don't want to beat this to death because --- well I just don't want to...... . My only intention was to illustrate another method which attempts to conservatively reflect the maximum consistent income of an individual. In 'close' cases it can matter very much.