os306

Hi everyone,

My wife (USC) and I (UKC) recently filed our I-130 form via DCF at the London Office. Unfortunately, given the current COVID-19 pandemic, we have no idea how long it is going to take for them to process our petition. Nonetheless, we wanted to get our ducks in a row for the next stage and start preparing early. I am looking at the I-864 (Affidavit of Support) and had a few questions that I was hoping someone could help us with:

1. My wife is currently unemployed and we will therefore be using a joint sponsor (my father in law). His income is well above the threshold required to sponsor me. Can I just confirm that we are required to submit IRS tax transcripts for both my wife and my father-in-law, even though USCIS will only be only concerned with father-in-law's income?

2. Are we required to submit the past three years of tax transcripts for both my wife and father-in-law, or only the transcript for the most recent tax year? On the travel.state.gov website (https://travel.state.gov/content/tra...documents.html) it states that we only require documentation from the most recent tax year, however, on the USCIS website (https://www.uscis.gov/i-864) it states that the past three years are required.

3. For those of you living in the UK, how did you request your tax transcripts from the IRS? Looking at other posts it looks like people have been unable to request these online as the system does not accept UK addresses (which is where we filed from). Other people have tried calling the IRS International hotline (267-941-1000); however, when we have tried calling it over the past few days the voicemail message says that "live telephone assistance is not available at this time", probably due to reduced staffing as a result of coronavirus. So we are a bit stuck on what to do next!

We would be incredibly grateful for anyone's advice. Thank you!

scrubbedexpat099

Your wife is always the Sponsor and needs to submit her tax return.

Used to be 3 years but 1 year now seems what is required, I would have 3 years to hand.

Use her US address?

os306

Thanks. Frustratingly, to obtain the transcript online you have to enter the address you filed with (i.e. our UK address), so using her US address is a no-go. To get around this, people have phoned the IRS international hotline and explained the situation to a representative (who would fax the transcript over), but it looks like this number is no longer staffed by live representatives. Tricky situation.

scrubbedexpat099

Well hopefully when things get going again the hotline will be back operating.

os306

Indeed. Everything is up in the air right now, so no idea when that will be.

For anyone else in the UK who has actually had first-hand experience of obtaining their tax transcripts from the IRS, we would be very grateful if you could share your experience.