International Bank Transfers from Husband to Wife - Tax Implications

This is actually fairly straightforward! Transfers between spouses are generally considered gifts and not taxable income to your wife. The important things to know: 1) For US citizens receiving gifts from foreign spouses, there's an annual exclusion amount ($185,000 for 2025) - your $25K is well under this limit, so no gift tax return needed. 2) Be careful about structuring your payments to avoid the $10K reporting threshold. Banks are required to report cash transactions over $10K, and intentionally making smaller transfers to avoid this looks suspicious and is called "structuring" which is actually illegal. Just send the amounts you need to naturally. 3) Your wife may see a Currency Transaction Report filed by her bank for transfers over $10K, but this is just routine reporting - not something that triggers taxes. 4) If your wife has foreign financial accounts with signature authority exceeding $10K at any point, she would need to file an FBAR, but that doesn't apply to money you're sending directly to her US account. Hope this helps clarify things!

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If you're having trouble getting clear answers about these international transfers, I had a similar issue and eventually had to speak directly with an IRS agent to get it resolved. Normally getting through to the IRS is a nightmare (I tried for 3 weeks!), but I finally used https://claimyr.com and got connected to an actual IRS representative in under 45 minutes. You can see how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c. The agent confirmed that transfers from my non-US spouse weren't taxable income and explained exactly what we needed to document. Having that official confirmation directly from the IRS gave us peace of mind that we weren't missing anything.

I need to apologize for my skeptical comment earlier. After struggling to get through to the IRS for days about my husband's international transfers to my account, I finally gave Claimyr a try out of desperation. I'm shocked to say it actually worked exactly as described. Their system handled the hold queue (which was over 1.5 hours!) and called me once they reached a human. The IRS agent I spoke with confirmed that my husband's transfers weren't taxable income to me, and also explained that while banks do report large transfers, this doesn't automatically trigger any tax obligations. Having this official confirmation directly from the IRS was exactly what we needed for peace of mind. Won't be spending hours on hold again.

Don't overthink this situation. My Filipino husband sends me money regularly from overseas, and we've never had any tax issues. The key things to know: 1) Money between spouses is not taxable income 2) You don't need to file gift tax forms unless the amount is huge (way over what you're talking about) 3) Banks are required to report large transfers, but that's for anti-money laundering purposes, not tax reasons Just make sure your wife keeps basic records of where the money came from in case questions ever come up. We've been doing this for 5+ years with no problems.

One thing nobody has mentioned yet - your wife should check with her bank about their specific policies on international wire transfers. Some banks charge ridiculous fees (my bank takes $45 per incoming international wire), and some may have additional documentation requirements. My husband is Canadian and when he first started sending me money, my bank froze the first transfer for 5 days while they "verified" it, which was super annoying. Might be worth her calling her bank in advance just to understand their specific process.

Just to add another perspective - I'm a US citizen married to a German citizen, and we've been dealing with these international transfers for years. One thing I learned is that your wife should keep documentation not just of the transfers themselves, but also proof of your marriage relationship. We keep copies of our marriage certificate and my husband's ID readily available because banks sometimes ask for this during larger transfers to verify the spousal relationship. Also, if your wife uses online banking, she should expect to see the transfers show up with codes like "OBI" (Originator Beneficiary Information) that might look confusing but are just standard international wire identifiers. The most important thing is that this really is routine - international spousal transfers happen thousands of times daily and the banks are well equipped to handle them properly.