# NRA and 1040 filing



## Travis Black (10 mo ago)

I've been reading up on the forum regarding filling in the 1040 and FBAR when MFS. My spouse is not a US person and isn't comfortable having her name and address provided to the IRS. It seems from the related posts on this forum that all that's really necessary is that you write in NRA in place of the name and SSN. I'm preparing tax forms for the streamline programme and later plan to renounce. The people helping me told me that the IRS says the spoused name must be reported on the tax return. And that FBAR filing requirement demands the joint holders to be mentioned as well. After I expalined that it was my spouse's decision the prepares said that "If you wish not to provide us with your spouse's information, we'll go without it, although that's not an accurate manner of reporting. The chances are small, but in case of a potential notice from the IRS or the FinCEN, you'll need to explain to them the reason for not providing us that information."

My question is if anyone has had this happen to them (receiving a notice from the IRS or FinCEN asking for an explanation) or other similar experiences. If we were to provide my spouse's name (and our joint address) what would that mean in practice? According to the preparers the IRS won't take into consideration my spouse's income or require any other disposal of information. But of course we are wary. Would it make a difference by providing the spouse's name as requested?

Thanks in advance for any information you can share.


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## Moulard (Feb 3, 2017)

In practice, all it will mean is any correspondence sent by the IRS to you about the return will be addressed to both you and your spouse.


But if it is any relief to your spouse...

No one is going to look at the FinCen Form 114 - FinCen are not interested in ordinary bank accounts.. their remit is money laundering and the like.

The IRS does not tend to look at them unless they are already interested in you for other reasons.

As to your tax return... your return is more likely to get noticed and picked up as having an error if you file MFS and do not supply the name of your spouse. In fact I would expect that you would not be able to e-file at all, so if you wanted to go down the route of no spouse name then you would have to paper file. 
If this return is part of a streamline process.. you want to make as few waves as possible.


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## Travis Black (10 mo ago)

Moulard said:


> In practice, all it will mean is any correspondence sent by the IRS to you about the return will be addressed to both you and your spouse.
> 
> 
> But if it is any relief to your spouse...
> ...


Hello and thank you for your reply. So if I add NRA spouse's name the only think that happens is that the returns are address to both her and I? Nothing else? You mentioned that e-filing is not possible without a name, but the SSN will also be blank. That's not a problem? I assume the the people I have hired to help me with the returns and forms use e-file as it's a business for this kind of thing (although for the streamline the returns are mailed in on paper, right?). As I wrote in the post, the preparers didn't think it was a good idea but they seemed also to be able to use NRA instead of a name, so I wonder. So what you are suggesting is that I provide my spouse's name since it won't mean anything except that her name will be on any correspondance regarding the returns. I'll speak to her again and see if she agrees. Thanks for your input.


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## Moulard (Feb 3, 2017)

Sorry, what I meant by the e-file limitation is that if you select MFS then the systems will expect a Name in the spouse field. Of course it won't be able to tell if it is a name, and even if there was a name if it was real. You may well still have issues e-filing MFS with a spouse without an SSN.. but that will depend on which provider you select.

It is my understanding that streamlined returns have to be paper files, which means that someone will have to transcribe them... last I head is that they still don't have OCR for individual returns.


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## Travis Black (10 mo ago)

I see. So then if it just expects a name, NRA could be accepted by the software programme perhaps. I'l have to ask the CPA I hired to put this all together. He seems to want the name, but didn't mention the lack of a SSN. Of course if I added my spouse's name but had to leave the SSN space blank, you'd think that would cause a similar problem. There must be lots of people in the world who have a NRA spouse and file taxes. What do they do? The streamline filings do need to go by post on paper along with the paper verions of the FBAR as is my understanding. But of course to be compliant so that I can renounce on good terms I need to back file 2017 and also file for 2021. Those may need to be e-filed. I don't know if the CPA would be happy to send paper versions or not. I imagine it would be considered a time consuming thing compared to the e-file. I still don't understand why the IRS would ask for a spouse's name if the other person is fililng MFS. Why do they want the name of someone who isn't the person who is filiing thier own tax return?


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## Moulard (Feb 3, 2017)

Lots of questions in the above but two stand out.

CPA have access to a wider range of tax prep tools that support a wider range of scenarios.. so what you can submit could be very different than a CPA if you were going that route.

The IRS asks for the spouses name and SSN so that they can compare the two returns to make sure that there is no double dipping or other shenanigans going on between the tax returns. NRA spouses are just collateral damage.

No such thing as a paper FBAR anymore.. all electronic..


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

I filed for many years as MFS and just put NRA in the spaces for spouse's name and SSN. When I finally attempted e-filing using a standard tax prep software, the software accepted the NRA information but when I went to efile, the IRS software rejected the return. I think it has changed now, but at one point it was possible on the FBARs to list the co-holder of a joint account as simply "spouse" with no further identifying data.

But as Moulard says, you have to file Streamlined Compliance filings on paper (except perhaps for the current year's return). However, filing on paper, there seems to be no problem indicating NRA for spouse's name and SSN. As swamped as the IRS is these days, chances are you won't hear anything back about how you filed - unless you have a very obviously dodgy return in there.


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## Travis Black (10 mo ago)

Hello again and thanks so much for your replies. I'm not the one who will be filing the returns, it will be the CPA and the company he works for so perhaps they do have the ability to write in NRA on the forms when they produce them. The one I recieved message from alluded that it would be possible not to have my spouse's name (as I insisted that is what she wanted) but suggested that it might trigger a notice from the IRS to ask for an explanation as to why it wasn't included. So, if the spouse who is a NRA doesn't have a SSN to provide, adding only the name would be quite pointless anyway, one would think. It would also look like someone forgot to provide the SSN if there is a name sitting atop the emply space for the digits of the SSN without any indication that this name belongs to a NRA. I think it would be more straitforward to just take the (grudginly made) offer of the CPA to go with adding in NRA and hope that by doing so doesn't cause any problems or raise any eyebrows when they go over the returns in the streamline envelope they receive. The returns themselves will be very straightforward (gross salary, FEIE, 0 tax owed) so I would hope that it sails through without making anyone want to ask questions about why it has NRA written in instead of a name.


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