We have noticed that the USCIS as well as the National Visa Center has started scrutinizing affidavit of support documents that list a petitioner or the sponsor as being self-employed and so what they want to see is now at least 6 months of bank statements. They want to see at least three years of tax returns instead of one year of tax returns. They want to see a letter of self-employment. We've seen quite a few RFE letters (request for evidence) on folks who are self-employed. They really just wanna prove that you actually have the income and you can show that you actually make the income listed on the form I-864 affidavit of support so really it's just ... you just need to provide more supporting evidence and also you need to have filed your taxes for the last three years and provide not only the tax returns but any W2s or ... well you wouldn't have W2s if you're self-employed but probably 1099s or anything like that and you need to include all of the tax forms as well that includes the schedules, B, C, and D.
You need all of that so when you say scrutinize, it just means that they're looking for more evidence and they just wanna make sure you meet the income requirements.
Yeah one thing I'll add to that, that's commonly brought up is the income they're looking for is, you know, your adjusted gross. The income that you're paying taxes on. So if you're self-employed and you bought in $100,000 that $100,000 number is irrelevant. What they're gonna use is the income you have available, which is basically the income you've declared if you're self-employed it would be your profit basically so what you're paying taxes on. So how much money you ran through your business is really irrelevant. You could run a million dollars through your business and actually lose money so it's not about the gross or how much you build your customers. That number is irrelevant and a lot of people, understandably, try to minimize their tax footprint by taking full advantage of every write-off, every tax loophole, if you will and that's certainly understandable we all want to minimize our tax foot print. However, if you're writing off so many things that your income is below the requirement then that's going to hurt you in this situation.
