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I have a conditional green card since mid 2009. My wife and I filed the I-751 to remove the condition in May 2011.
We then got the Biometric exam and everything went smoothly until October 2011 when we got an RFE asking for financial records such as tax returns for the last two years, bank statements least etc, joint ownership of car, mortgage etc...
My wife who is a US citizen and my petitioner, has been using the same accountant who lives out of state in the last 5-6 years and I started using him as well starting in 2008 after meeting my wife.
He does our returns over the phone and we pay him by check in the mail and I have never seen him in person, but my wife has. This was very convenient and we relied entirely on him to do our taxes.
Now during preparation of the response to the RFE I noticed for the first time that he has been filing our last three years taxes as single and not married!
After asking him how to fix it, he fist denied that we informed him of our marriage and said we told him that we just lived together! Then we dug out an email and showed him that my wife told him in the email that we are married but he still tried to deny it!
Now because of his overlooking of our married status, and since we didn’t understand the tax law we ended up with tax returns that state we are single! I honestly thought it was alright to file as single from the IRS point of view because we both paid our taxes through our employer and I thought the option was there to facilitate tax returns for self-employed persons who want to keep their business separate from their family finances.
Eventually we went to another accountant last month who filed an amended tax return 1040x and adjusted our status from single to married. This had tax benefits for us and we ended up with money owed to us by the IRS.
The problem is that the "explanation of change" on the amended tax return explains that we originally filed our taxes as "Single" and then changed to Married.
We don’t want to hide any information from the USCIS but we are worried that this will ruin our case due to the mistake of the accountant.
We also have the following documents in the response to the RFE:
Affidavit from our Apartment Management
Affidavit from friends and family
Joint utility and water bills for the last 3 years
Photos of us with friends and family over the last 3 years
Health-Dental insurance
lease agreement showing my wife and I as joint owners.
Joint ownership of a Car (since last month)
Joint car insurance (on and off over the last 3 years)
Both our 401k and Life Insurance showing each other as spouse
Do you have any advice on how to fix the tax return issue? The options that I think we have are:
1- Submit the "Explanation of Change" but also add a letter and explain the situation to the USCIS.
2- Submit the Amended Tax Return without the "Explanation of Change Statement" which says the change was from “single” to “married filing jointly” to avoid raising suspicion. Although I believe this will raise even more suspicion.
3- Not submit the tax return at all and only submit the other supporting financial documents and hope for the best because the USCIS did not explicitly ask for our tax returns although I know from the RFE letter that Tax Returns carry a lot of weight in making their decision.
I have another 5-10 days before the deadline to submit my Response to the RFE and would really appreciate any help.
Thanks
We then got the Biometric exam and everything went smoothly until October 2011 when we got an RFE asking for financial records such as tax returns for the last two years, bank statements least etc, joint ownership of car, mortgage etc...
My wife who is a US citizen and my petitioner, has been using the same accountant who lives out of state in the last 5-6 years and I started using him as well starting in 2008 after meeting my wife.
He does our returns over the phone and we pay him by check in the mail and I have never seen him in person, but my wife has. This was very convenient and we relied entirely on him to do our taxes.
Now during preparation of the response to the RFE I noticed for the first time that he has been filing our last three years taxes as single and not married!
After asking him how to fix it, he fist denied that we informed him of our marriage and said we told him that we just lived together! Then we dug out an email and showed him that my wife told him in the email that we are married but he still tried to deny it!
Now because of his overlooking of our married status, and since we didn’t understand the tax law we ended up with tax returns that state we are single! I honestly thought it was alright to file as single from the IRS point of view because we both paid our taxes through our employer and I thought the option was there to facilitate tax returns for self-employed persons who want to keep their business separate from their family finances.
Eventually we went to another accountant last month who filed an amended tax return 1040x and adjusted our status from single to married. This had tax benefits for us and we ended up with money owed to us by the IRS.
The problem is that the "explanation of change" on the amended tax return explains that we originally filed our taxes as "Single" and then changed to Married.
We don’t want to hide any information from the USCIS but we are worried that this will ruin our case due to the mistake of the accountant.
We also have the following documents in the response to the RFE:
Affidavit from our Apartment Management
Affidavit from friends and family
Joint utility and water bills for the last 3 years
Photos of us with friends and family over the last 3 years
Health-Dental insurance
lease agreement showing my wife and I as joint owners.
Joint ownership of a Car (since last month)
Joint car insurance (on and off over the last 3 years)
Both our 401k and Life Insurance showing each other as spouse
Do you have any advice on how to fix the tax return issue? The options that I think we have are:
1- Submit the "Explanation of Change" but also add a letter and explain the situation to the USCIS.
2- Submit the Amended Tax Return without the "Explanation of Change Statement" which says the change was from “single” to “married filing jointly” to avoid raising suspicion. Although I believe this will raise even more suspicion.
3- Not submit the tax return at all and only submit the other supporting financial documents and hope for the best because the USCIS did not explicitly ask for our tax returns although I know from the RFE letter that Tax Returns carry a lot of weight in making their decision.
I have another 5-10 days before the deadline to submit my Response to the RFE and would really appreciate any help.
Thanks
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