My husband has lived with me in Indonesia for three years and hasn't filed taxes. Is that a problem for my K1? Well, you have to have filed your taxes if he was legally required to file taxes, and we're not tax experts, but being outside the United States does not mean you don't have to file taxes. There are times you don't file taxes that have to do with you didn't make enough income and so on, and tax laws obviously are complicated. Again, we're not tax experts, but if you're outside the United States and working, you probably do have to file. You might not owe taxes and people mix that up between do I need to file and do I need to pay. You almost always have to file if you're working, and you may not have to pay, but you might have to file.
So anyway, generally speaking, and again, we're not tax experts, but generally speaking, you will have to catch up those past returns if you had income and were required to file or if you're required to file, which may or may not mean you had income. If you weren't required to file, no, you'll be okay, but you do need to explain, "Hey, here's why I wasn't required to file," and on the IRS website, you can very easily and quickly find the place where it'll tell you. There's basically a little quiz or questionnaire that you can determine if you're required to file based on your income, your situation. If you weren't, then you're fine and you just explain that, "Hey, based on the IRS, these reasons I wasn't required to file." You're fine.
Now the bigger problem you're going to have is you're not getting your fiance here without income, so you're going to have to have income right now. If you didn't work the last three years, that's okay, but right now you're going to have to have income, or you're going to have to have a job that starts as soon as you get back and even that might be a little problematic. That's your bigger problem. Not filing the taxes, especially if you weren't required, no problem at all. Not having a job and income, that's a big problem. You got to solve that problem.
