Delayed tax payments now a bane to U.S. citizenship
Unfortunately, against this evolving backdrop comes the disturbing news that naturalization cases are now being denied due to the applicants’ failure to pay their federal income taxes on time.
The pathway to US citizenship keeps getting smaller.
Since last year, the Trump administration has been taking significant steps to overhaul the entire naturalization process, making it more difficult, if not more psychologically daunting, to apply for US citizenship.
For instance, under a new adjudication policy, decades-old minor traffic violations with no clear proof of positive disposition, such as a court-issued release order or a fine payment receipt, can now hinder an otherwise approvable naturalization application.
Also, the Department of Homeland Security has recently revived the long-abandoned “neighborhood investigations” where the neighbors, co-workers, and business associates of a naturalization applicant are interviewed by US Citizen and Immigration Services officers as part of a rigorous vetting process to ferret out any disqualifying activity or behavior on the part of the applicant, presently or in the past.
Additionally, proactive evidence of the applicant’s behavior as an outstanding member of the community is now required, relegating the passive kind to the dustbin of irrelevance, if not futility. Simply put, the absence of any derogatory information against the applicant, without more, carries no meaningful weight as far as the evaluation of good moral character (GMC) is concerned.
Unfortunately, against this evolving backdrop comes the disturbing news that naturalization cases are now being denied due to the applicants’ failure to pay their federal income taxes on time. This despite a timely filed extension request or a valid payment plan approved by the Internal Revenue Service.
If the report proves accurate, a surge of unexpected denials is inevitable, at least in the near term.
Requesting an extension to file a federal tax return, while not vastly popular, is far from being unusual. In fact, 10 to 15 percent of all individual filers in America, or roughly 15 to 20 million taxpayers, avail of this relief annually.
Filing an extension request does not excuse a taxpayer from paying the tax on time. It only means that filing the paperwork, either digitally or by mail, may be delayed for another six months. In other words, the full amount of the tax itself will have to be remitted to the IRS by 15 April, failing which significant monetary penalties and interests will accrue.
Notably, both the failure to file an extension request and the non-payment of the tax itself by the 15 April deadline beget a corresponding penalty.
Based on anecdotal reporting, an applicant’s failure to pay the tax on or before 15 April, if occurring within the required five-year period (or three-year period, as the case may be) for establishing good moral character (GMC period), and regardless of any payment agreement or eventual satisfaction of the tax delinquencies, will result in a case denial on GMC grounds.
Moreover, even if the omission took place outside of the corresponding GMC period, there is still a risk of denial, given the newly broadened disqualification criteria and the expanded timeline for evaluating the applicant’s GMC.
A tricky situation may arise, however, if the applicant had remitted the tax payment but failed to file a tax return or submit an extension request prior to 15 April. Does the timely payment of the tax insulate the applicant from any other GMC issue?
Conjecturally, the answer would depend on whether the tax owed was paid in full or not.