Insights into my tax situation

moneyissues123 · Post by **moneyissues123** » Sun Mar 13, 2016 5:35 pm

Hi everyone,

Just curious to get peoples insight into my tax situation, and some questions to follow:

I am a Canadian citizen and a US permanent resident (became a PR in October 2015), and married to a dual US citizen and a Canadian citizen. We lived and worked in Canada for most of 2015 until having moved to the US in December 2015. I have US income for 2015 (a small amount); my spouse doesn't.

For our Canadian taxes, my long-time accountant will file our returns as always. I am more concerned about our US taxes:

(1) Instead of filing a 1040NR for Jan-Nov 2015 and a 1040 for Dec 2015, can I file a single 1040 for the entire year and declare that I would like to be treated for tax purposes as an alien resident for the entire year? Is that even advantageous? Or is it better to keep my dual-status (i.e. nonresident and resident)?

(2) If I were to file a 1040NR and 1040 (i.e. dual-status), do I need to file Married filing Separately?

(3) I know this is a big topic as always. I have a TFSA and earn a small amount of dividends in it. How best to report this? Can I simply include the total amount of dividends as income on my Form 1040?

Thanks for your feedback.

nelsona · Post by **nelsona** » Mon Mar 14, 2016 10:32 am

Your Cdn tax guy should NOT file "as always". He should file a departure return for you with December departure date.

since you are both now required to fiel a US 1040, you should file jointly full-year 1040 reporting ALL world income and then taking exemption for any Cdn wages (using 255) and 1116 for any foreign tax credit.