How to Get an ITIN For My Non-US Citizen Spouse or Dependent

Today, we’re going to be talking about how to get an ITIN for your non-US citizen spouse or dependent.

Hey, everyone. This is Sina Bonabi from EIN Express.

I’m an IRS-certified acceptance agent, and I’m both trained and authorized by the IRS to help non-US citizens all over the world to successfully get their ITINs for them, and also their EINs as well.

We’ve assisted over 2,240 non-US citizens to help get their EINs and ITINs, and we’d love to help you get your EIN and ITIN as well, too.

Today, we’re going to go ahead and discuss a common question that we get.

This one is a tax return type of question. It’s when we have US citizens or US resident aliens for tax purposes, who are trying to get an ITIN for their non-US citizen spouse or dependent.

Oftentimes, when they come to me, they say…

“Hey, Sina, you know…” I’ll give you an example. They’ll come to me and say, “Hey, Sina. You know, I went overseas. I’m a US citizen. I went overseas, and I found love, and I got married to a non-US citizen,” let’s say for example from the Philippines. They’ll come to me and say, “I need to get an ITIN,” let’s say for this conversation, “for my wife in the Philippines. I need to get an ITIN for her so that I can go ahead and file my taxes.”

Apply for your spouse or dependent’s ITIN today: https://einexpress.com/itin

Is My Non-US Citizen Spouse Qualified to Get an ITIN?

The common misconception here is that they’re thinking it needs to be done separately, where you have to get an ITIN first, and then go ahead and then file your taxes and claim them on there.

No.

They’re done simultaneously. That’s what the misconception is there. The way it works is you need to… Because the spouse on their own, you know, doesn’t qualify to apply for an ITIN.

It’s being your spouse and being claimed on your taxes is what’s going to qualify them to apply for an ITIN. That’s why it needs to be done simultaneously.

The way it’ll work is the tax return needs to be prepared, and in this case that we’re talking about, if it’s a spouse, it’ll be a married filing jointly tax return, and the tax return needs to be prepared either by the client or by… either by yourself or we can prepare it for you as well, too.

Then we also prepare your ITIN application properly for you as well. Then what we do is we make sure both of you sign the tax return, because spouses need to sign tax returns as well as the person whose tax return it is.

Dependents don’t have to sign tax returns. I just want to note that as well.

So what we do is we take that married filing jointly tax return and also that ITIN application for the spouse, and we put them together, and we manually file them together through the IRS service center in Austin, Texas.

Now, when that tax examiner gets that file from us, they’re going to see that you have a married filing jointly tax return, and the spouse has no tax ID, but they’re going to also see that an ITIN application was attached to that tax return.

What they’ll do is they’ll first process the spouse’s ITIN application, issue the spouse an ITIN, and then the IRS will manually put that ITIN on the tax return, and then process that tax return accordingly.

Apply for ITIN here: https://einexpress.com/itin

How About our Dependents, Are they Qualified to Get an ITIN Too?

The same is done as well for dependents, too.

Now, dependents, in terms of being claimed as a dependent on a tax return, there are new sets of tax laws out there that have come up in 2018, that differ from prior years, and we’ll discuss that in another video, but for this video, we wanted to simply clarify how to get an ITIN for a non-US citizen spouse or dependent.

They have to be done simultaneously.

You’re not supposed to do them separately, because oftentimes, the dependent or the spouse doesn’t qualify to apply for an ITIN on their own.

It’s being the dependent of a person who needs to claim them or being the spouse of a US citizen or US resident alien who needs to claim them on their taxes that qualifies them to be able to get an ITIN.

So they need to be done simultaneously.

What To Do Next

I hope this response was really helpful, clarified any confusion, or it was informative.

You know, let me know what you think. If you have any questions, post them in the comments below, and if you’re ready to get your EIN, or your ITIN, or both, go ahead and click the link below to start your application.

Apply for your spouse or dependent’s ITIN: https://einexpress.com/itin