September 2018 AOS Filers

[C90 376]

1 hour ago, Johannab143 said:

Hi everyone!

My EAD case was updated 2/7/19 to ‘card is being produced’

 

Received 09/14/2018

NOA1 09/21/2018

 

No change on the AP yet, got my fingers crossed x

Congrats! My AP didn't change either, but I read that almost no one gets the AP updated but you do get the combo card  We'll see in a week or 2!

[akoko-01 12]

8 hours ago, ThomasNC1988 said:

I don't know how important this is to anyone, but since we have been talking a lot about taxes I'll post it. My wife got her SSN last week and I tried to file married filing joint on Monday but it was declined because my spouses info did not match the e-file database. After some research I realized I had to wait a while. Re-filed today and it was accepted. My understanding is as long as you were married by December 31st you are eligible to file married filing joint just as a regular citizen would and it was extremely advantageous to me as she had 0 income. Hope this helps someone.

yes it is very important cz we just found out that we will have to pay a significant amount of money for some company to do the taxes and they handed our file to a 20 years old employee that answered every question that we asked by: " I will search for it..."

if you filed by yourselves or somebody filed for you but you understood how they  did it, plz send us a message in your free time so we can ask you couple of questions. 

thank you

[DeepakChani 738]

Good Weekend Everyone! For those who got either EAD or AP approval notices, please keep your timeline updated :) 

[Buhr 122]

Got an unexpected EAD/AP combo card in the mail today.

 

Not sure if I'm gonna have any use to it since my interview is in two weeks but at least I can finally get a drivers license and stop carrying my passport everywhere!

[C90 376]

27 minutes ago, Buhr said:

Got an unexpected EAD/AP combo card in the mail today.

 

Not sure if I'm gonna have any use to it since my interview is in two weeks but at least I can finally get a drivers license and stop carrying my passport everywhere!

Congrats! What was your approval date?

[Buhr 122]

1 minute ago, C90 said:

Congrats! What was your approval date?

Thank you! It seems like we should start seeing a lot of approvals in this thread soon.

 

My Received date is 9/7/2018, the approval Notice date is 2/4/2019.

[Nika211 17]

On 2/8/2019 at 3:27 PM, ThomasNC1988 said:

I don't know how important this is to anyone, but since we have been talking a lot about taxes I'll post it. My wife got her SSN last week and I tried to file married filing joint on Monday but it was declined because my spouses info did not match the e-file database. After some research I realized I had to wait a while. Re-filed today and it was accepted. My understanding is as long as you were married by December 31st you are eligible to file married filing joint just as a regular citizen would and it was extremely advantageous to me as she had 0 income. Hope this helps someone.

Did you report your spouse worldwide income when you filed or no? I went to hr and block and they said I didn't have to include it. 

[ThomasNC1988 762]

9 minutes ago, Nika211 said:

Did you report your spouse worldwide income when you filed or no? I went to hr and block and they said I didn't have to include it. 

My spouse had no income. I wouldn't take any tax advice from H&R block. They are probably right that if you didn't report it you would have been fine, but I'm pretty sure legally you are required to report bit.

[Nika211 17]

1 hour ago, ThomasNC1988 said:

My spouse had no income. I wouldn't take any tax advice from H&R block. They are probably right that if you didn't report it you would have been fine, but I'm pretty sure legally you are required to report bit.

Ok thanks my spouse hasn't had any income since he moved here in July. But I def appreciate the advice

[Naes 12,205]

1 hour ago, Nika211 said:

Ok thanks my spouse hasn't had any income since he moved here in July. But I def appreciate the advice

It is not about since they moved to US. If you’re filing married filing jointly then you’re filing her as a resident for tax purposes, which means she needs to send a statement that she wants to be counted as one and also form 2555 for foreign income even if she wasn’t living here at the moment. I will be going to H&R Block today too and the moment they say you don’t have to put it will be the moment I get up and they get no pay from it.

[C90 376]

2 hours ago, Nika211 said:

Ok thanks my spouse hasn't had any income since he moved here in July. But I def appreciate the advice

If you file jointly you have to request that the IRS treats your spouse as a RA. At that moment you have to report ALL the income over 2018, even if (s)he made it in his/her home country. Apparently you can exclude it later on, but it's a little confusing so we'll use an accountant. Don't use an accountant that doesn't know the rules of immigration and taxes. Tbh I don't think h&r block, turbotax etc are very educated on this.

[akoko-01 12]

1 hour ago, Naes said:

It is not about since they moved to US. If you’re filing married filing jointly then you’re filing her as a resident for tax purposes, which means she needs to send a statement that she wants to be counted as one and also form 2555 for foreign income even if she wasn’t living here at the moment. I will be going to H&R Block today too and the moment they say you don’t have to put it will be the moment I get up and they get no pay from it.

when you have time, could you plz tell us how it went? they are telling us all the same: don't report the worldwide income and its better to file separately. we live in a town where nobody knows how to deal with this situation. so we are trying to figure it out by ourselves. thank you

[Naes 12,205]

38 minutes ago, akoko-01 said:

when you have time, could you plz tell us how it went? they are telling us all the same: don't report the worldwide income and its better to file separately. we live in a town where nobody knows how to deal with this situation. so we are trying to figure it out by ourselves. thank you

So far from what I researched if your foreign income is an amount that can be excluded (somewhere less than 100k not sure about the exact amount) then it is best to file married jointly cause of the deduction.

 

I’d actually would like to ask @geowrian what he thinks about this.  

[dynesyzygy24 57]

Exactly 160days still nothing ☹️

[Naes 12,205]

Just now, dynesyzygy24 said:

Exactly 160days still nothing ☹️

sigh... yep... I finally started putting my resume together though... with the anticipation