Do I need to file a tax return on zero income in the US if I became a resident late in December?
I am writing about the filing of tax return as a new permanent
resident, whose deadline is April 15th 2014.
I wish to know if I am required to file,
for I entered the US with a DV1 immigrant visa on December the 19th 2013.
From then til December 31st 2013 I did not work (13 days of presence
in US during 2013), and in those days I did not get any kind of income either.
As far as I can see from the internet I do not pass neither the
presence test (31 days) nor the green card test for tax purposes ( I
got the plastic card on April 5th 2014).
Still some suggests I should file anyway, as avoiding this could be
interpreted as a wish to abandon residence status.
Becoming a US resident on Dec 19th, 2013 (which equals to 13 days) and not earning anything by then in 2013, I would like to know if I need to file a tax return. For before Dec 19th, 2013 I was neither a US resident nor I was present in the US at all.
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I'm not sure which version of the residency rules you looked at, but the statute itself is IRC § 7701(b)(1)(A)(i):
(A) Resident alien. An alien individual shall be treated as a resident of the United States with respect to any calendar year if (and only if) such individual meets the requirements of clause (i), (ii), or (iii):
(i) Lawfully admitted for permanent residence. Such individual is a lawful permanent resident of the United States at any time during such calendar year.
You were a lawful permanent resident. It doesn't hinge on which paperwork you received from immigration authorities. That way Congress doesn't rewrite the Tax Code for changes to immigration law.
Resident aliens are subject to the same filing requirements as US citizens, as per the 1040 Instructions. You do not have a tax-law obligation to file if you had zero income after you were lawfully admitted for permanent residence.
If you wish to file, or you must do so for some immigration-law reasons (which I couldn't comment on), then you should be able to do free e-file on many websites (don't bother with state filing).
DV/IR visas, when stamped by the immigration officer at the port of your arrival (the airport where you went through the immigration) become your official green card. That is why they're stamped as I-551 - they are I-551 (the official document certifying to your status of a permanent resident alien). Stamped visa is as good as the physical green card for 1 year, during which you're expected to receive your physical card, which is what indeed happened in your case.
So you are a permanent US resident starting of December 19th (the date of your arrival). The date at which the physical card was waiting for you in the mail is of no consequence.
As to whether you need to file a return - if you didn't have any income (neither in the US nor abroad) during these 13 days, you probably don't have to file it. But if you want to cover your a$$ when the USCIS looks at you for whatever reason - file it anyway, even if it is an empty 1040EZ.
As a green card holder, you can file as a resident for the whole year, but pay attention: you need to declare, and pay taxes on, your worldwide income for the whole period of time you're filing as a US resident.
Another factor here--foreign bank accounts could cause you to need to file. IIRC it's k in assets but I wouldn't trust my memory on this.
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