My SO and I are currently going through the joyful process that is spousal immigration to the US. I’m the immigrant, he’s the American. One of the forms we need to send in after the swiftly approaching wedding requires his tax returns from the last three years.
We’ll have this year’s soon, and he has last years at hand. But we don’t know what happened to the year before.
I’m clueless. How do we obtain copies of his old tax returns?
You can get them from the IRS. As I recall they seemed a bit costly.
If a tax preparer helped him, they are also required to keep copies, IIRC. If he did it himself, I second OldGuy’s suggestion.
Unless the law changed since I went through this back in 2000, then what the exact wording really means is that you only need three years of tax returns for years in which you were required to file one, and an explanation for years in which you were not required to file one. I had the very same problem – two years worth, but missing the very earliest (actually, I was lazy; I had two years of PDF’s I could re-print at will, and one year of paper records I didn’t want to have to go out and photocopy [pre-scanner days for me]).
Here’s the key – if the government owes a refund, you’re not required to file (goverment’s happy to keep your money). Since I always am due a refund, strictly speaking I never, ever have to file tax forms. So I did the immigration paperwork with two years of returns and a written note explaining this for the first (earliest) year.