Unique Filing Situations

Time Requirement: 15 minutes

Purpose

The rules for claiming exemptions and determining the correct filing status were covered in the Dependents and Filing Status lessons. This lesson addresses unique exemption and filing status issues you may encounter when assisting taxpayers who are not U.S. citizens.

Objectives

• Determine whether an individual is a resident or nonresident alien
• Determine who can claim the personal exemption for a spouse who is a nonresident alien
• Apply the support test and citizen or resident test to determine whether an individual can be claimed as a dependent
• Apply special rules for Head of Household status when the spouse is a nonresident alien

Teaching the Lesson

Refer to the Lesson Plan for helpful instructor notes, visual aids, TaxSlayer® demos, and Internet links. Prompt students to share what they know about unique filing status and exemption situations.

Refer students who may want to work independently to Publication 4491, Unique Filing Situations.

Key References

This lesson refers to the following publications and forms:

• Form 13614-C
• Publication 4012, Resident/NR Aliens, Starting a Return and Filing Status, and Dependents tabs
• Publication 17, Chapters 1-3

All references to materials can be found by clicking Job Aids and Media buttons. There are also links to helpful tool that can be found on the irs.gov public portal. For this lesson, the student can link to the following sites for additional help:

• Interactive Tax Assistant to determine filing status
• Interactive Tax Assistant to determine who can be claimed as an dependent
• Filing Status

TaxSlayer® Demos and Tutorials

It is recommended to go to the Practice Lab and access the latest TaxSlayer tutorial for this lesson. The TaxSlayer tutorials can be found by going to the Practice Lab and clicking on the link for TaxSlayer IRS training.

Publication 4012, Starting a Return and Filing Status and Dependents tabs, includes how to enter filing status and dependents in TaxSlayer.