Help - Jamaica transplant

[oceanlovin'ea]

I have a client who married a guy from Jamaica. He was in US for 234 days in 2017. He had no income since he came here. Wife is employed.

He has a social security number. His green card status is pending. Having last interview this week.

Can you give me some direction as to where to look to determine how to handle this return? At first I was thinking that since he has social security number I could file MFJ return.
Then I realized that he probably had income in Jamaica before he moved here. So does that affect the tax return I am doing? He left me a message and said that in Jamaica filing tax returns was
not something people had to do. From what I could find the filing requirement was extremely high, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just tell me where to look please

Linda F

[oceanlovin'ea]

social security number

ITINs start with the number 9. His number starts with the number 1. So I believe it is a social security number.

I was tempted to just file MFJ return. But it will make a huge difference in filing her MFJ and MFS so I would hate for them to get large refund and then have to repay it.

Want to do it right.

Linda F

[Kram BergGold]

My View

The fact that he does not file in Jamaica is irrelevant. If you file MFJ he is making an election (I think you have to stipulate to this on the return) to pretend that he is subject to US tax for the entire year. Maybe you could use the foreign earned income exclusion. If not maybe his income would be small enough so that filing MFJ will be better than MFS.