I don&#x27;t know if this applies to you, but state-side the sale of an asset wouldn&#x27;t be counted as income.<p>According to this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;money&#x2F;2803550&#x2F;income-taxes-on-home-sale&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;money&#x2F;2803550&#x2F;income-taxes-on-home-sale&#x2F;</a><p>If you lived in your previous home for at least 2 years, then you&#x27;d take it&#x27;s original sale price plus closing&#x2F;brokerage&#x2F;etc costs as your &quot;basis&quot;. Then take your later sale price subtracting those same costs. You get a $250,000 credit on profits.<p>So to me (a complete layman who&#x27;s maybe not very good at taxes), that means if I buy a house for $200,000 plus 5% closing costs, my original expenses were $210,000. I later sell it for $450,000 minus 5% closing costs. That&#x27;s $427,500. I&#x27;ve made $217,500 for holding onto the asset for two years. I should probably play the lottery. ;-)<p>Because I&#x27;m under the $250,000 single filing credit ($500,000 for joint filing couples, but I&#x27;m not sure how that&#x27;d work in your case since you&#x27;re not a US citizen), I don&#x27;t owe anything.<p>Say I did really well and made $400,000 in pure profit though (selling my $210,000 in the neighborhood of $600,000+).<p>You still get the credit so your taxable profit is $150,000 (assuming the joint filing credit wouldn&#x27;t apply). That&#x27;s taxed as capital gains. Not income. Which is a regressive tax. The highest rate is 20%. That&#x27;d be a $30,000 tax bill.<p>This all assumes you even put her on the title for the old property. If you didn&#x27;t, then the sale doesn&#x27;t mean anything necessarily. That she had access to the money through a joint banking account after the sale might complicate things?<p>In general I&#x27;ve found the IRS to be very helpful. They&#x27;re not interested in prosecution (IME). They just want their due. And they&#x27;re pretty flexible in making that happen.<p>Once upon a time I owed $15,000 in taxes from previous contract work, and hadn&#x27;t filed in a few years because I was scared of the consequences. That&#x27;s about the worst move. By not filing I racked up something like $1,000 in non-filing penalties each year as well as paying 10% interest on the amount owed.<p>When I finally did get my act together and contact them they waived further penalties, suspended the interest on the amount owed and set me up with a $300 a month payment plan.<p>There are a lot of horror stories out there. And bad things do happen to good people. But I&#x27;d like to imagine that most cases work out more like mine.<p>If I were in your position, I&#x27;d make it a priority to talk to a tax attorney, being sure they don&#x27;t have a reporting obligation. It probably won&#x27;t cost more than a few hundred dollars just to get some advice. Then I&#x27;d get a second opinion. Once I had some confidence I had a grip on the situation and how it was likely to play out, I&#x27;d talk to the IRS on my own, get on a payment plan if necessary, and put it behind me.<p>I&#x27;m not sure it applies in your situation, but stateside, simply avoiding filing properly is about the worst thing you can do. It doesn&#x27;t just go away on it&#x27;s own. That only makes it worse (interest and penalties).<p>But you know, I&#x27;m just some random guy on the internet. Figure out if tax attorneys have a reporting obligation and talk to one maybe? Good luck!