# ITIN for non resident spouse on US 1040



## brew99 (Mar 6, 2021)

I'm a US/Cdn citizen married to a Canadian and we been living in Canada and filing my US taxes for the last 8 years. I've always files as "Married separate" and just indicated my husbands name without an ITIN, and have not been questioned on this. My return is very simple and all my income from Canada is exempt. I am now reading more deeply into it, and it appears that he probably should have an ITIN and be entered on the 1040.

Am I correct in that he is required to have an ITIN (He is not a US citizen and has never lived in the US, nor are we planning to)? If so, why have they never questioned this before?


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## Nononymous (Jul 12, 2011)

No, he need not have an ITIN. If you use "married filing separately" he's just an unidentified NRA spouse.

A problem does seem to arise with some tax software not accepting a missing ITIN, so expat are often stuck mailing in their returns on paper.


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## brew99 (Mar 6, 2021)

Thank you for that confirmation. This is the first year I have tried playing with software with the goal of e-filing, and am running into that exact issue. It will not allow me to e-file without him having a SSN or ITIN. I normally mail in the paper copies, so will just continue to do it that way


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## Moulard (Feb 3, 2017)

Some software providers support entering NRA for the spouse when filing separately some do not. It may be trial and error - at least check their FAQ before starting.

If you are excluding ALL of your income the other hurdle is some providers will not allow you to efile with zero AGI. The trick to get around that one is to add $1 of "Other Income, with a comment that it was added for efiling only. Will still result in zero tax.


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## brew99 (Mar 6, 2021)

Thanks for the tip.


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