Use of Assets

[Michael2017 368]

Hi,

 

1.  My wife is  will make enough in 2017 to meet the requirements, however, she was a student abroad in the past years with lower income,

and her income is only from self employment.

 

2. Therefore, I consider adding available cash assets in our joint US saving account.

 

My questions:

 

1. Will the AOS be rejected if we add additionally (and somehow against instructions of AOS form) assets although she actually meets the requirements

or will it bring additional confidence of the consular officer that there is no risk of a public charge?

 

2. It says totals of all "checking and savings" accounts. My wife has a lot of saving and checking accounts but only in 1 saving account is 95% of our money.

Can we just present statements of the one account and write that we have other accounts that have positive balance (so sum would be even higher),

or they want to see a "million" of statements from each and every checking and saving account she has in the US and abroad?

 

3. I read that they want to have statements of 12 months and make the average of it. This is not written like that in the instructions to the AOS.

Anyone has experience with that?

 

[Suudsu 66]

If I were in your situation, I would opt for proving the income, since it's the most straightforward. Since 2017 is coming to a close, your wife will file taxes for 2017 soon, and by the time your interview comes around you'll have the most recent tax year being 2017, for which you will have an IRS 1040 transcript. To me, that would be the easiest way to demonstrate meeting the threshold.

[Michael2017 368]

35 minutes ago, Suudsu said:

If I were in your situation, I would opt for proving the income, since it's the most straightforward. Since 2017 is coming to a close, your wife will file taxes for 2017 soon, and by the time your interview comes around you'll have the most recent tax year being 2017, for which you will have an IRS 1040 transcript. To me, that would be the easiest way to demonstrate meeting the threshold.

Yes, makes full sense. My worries are her weak years 2016 and 2015 when she was a student. Her current income is from self employment which could be questioned in my opinion as of being stable. Those are my worries.

[Suudsu 66]

Just now, Michael2017 said:

Yes, makes full sense. My worries are her weak years 2016 and 2015 when she was a student. Her current income is from self employment which could be questioned in my opinion as of being stable. Those are my worries.

I understand the worries. However the IRS statements are the best standard, especially given that she won't have pay stubs to prove her income.

 

Because your wife is self-employed, does she have more regular filing periods with the IRS? For example, quarterly filing? That might help prove her current income.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employed-individuals-tax-center

[Michael2017 368]

4 minutes ago, Suudsu said:

I understand the worries. However the IRS statements are the best standard, especially given that she won't have pay stubs to prove her income.

 

Because your wife is self-employed, does she have more regular filing periods with the IRS? For example, quarterly filing? That might help prove her current income.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employed-individuals-tax-center

Thanks. Well, it is her first year, and her tax obligation was 0 the last year 2016, so there is no requirements for quarterly payments.

We did pre-pay the tax we estimate for 2017 however as a matter of good will. 

 

For the next year she will need to make those quarterly payments by law, however, those are not returns. She simply figures out how much she will be making during the year, or 110% of the last year. Thus, presenting the pre-payment receipt from the IRS may assist her to convince the officer that her current income is projected to be at a certain level in 2018. 

 

I understand that we could simply make 2 different AOS ready for the interview. One with and one without the assets, and if the one without the assets gets questions, we have the second one ready prepared available?

[Suudsu 66]

1 minute ago, Michael2017 said:

I understand that we could simply make 2 different AOS ready for the interview. One with and one without the assets, and if the one without the assets gets questions, we have the second one ready prepared available?

I don't know the answer to this one, I'm afraid. My interpretation is that they just want to see that your sponsor qualifies.

[Ryan H 3,812]

Moved from Progress Reports to Process & Procedures.