Yesterday I posted a question about tax deduction for Chinese students and Scholars and found out those who came here on a F2 would not be able to claim tax treaty 20(c) benefits which allows $5000 deduction. Thank you for those who provided the information.
As I fixed my federal tax return, many other questions popped up.
First, shall I fix the state tax before I file my I-485 in the future (propably in 2-3 yrs since our perm submission date was in 2005). When I filed 2002 and 2003 federal tax returns in a wrong way, I also made mistakes in state tax returns. Does it matter for my green card application if I do not do anything to the state tax? One bad thing about my case is that I did not make a copy of the state tax return for those years!
Second, do I need to file city tax on H-1 B status? When I was a student, I only recieved 3 W-2 forms (one for federal return, one for state and city return and one for personal record). Whereas on a H-1B status, I got an extra W-2 form for state and city return. I have never done any city tax filing yet.
Third, does anyone know how the IRS calculates the interest rate/punishment? I guess I incurred a handsome sum of interest debt. How I wish that I had attended those tax sessions held by school tax officials!