In the questions for tax years, please use the following rule to figure out the most recent tax year:
Step 1: Check the date
If the date as of your filing of AOS is between October 17th and January 1st, then your most recent tax year should be the prior year. For example: you are filing your AOS packet on November 1st 2023 then your most recent tax year has to be 2022. [Current year-1]
Why? the last date for filing taxes for a given year is October 16th generally and once this date passes there is no opportunity to say that you have elected to not file taxes yet legally.
Step 2: Check tax filing status
If the date is between January 1st and and October 16th you are in the legal window to file taxes for the prior year and should check to see if you have filed taxes for prior year or not. If you have filed taxes for the prior year then that will be your most recent tax year, other wise it will current year -2.
Lets take 2 examples and see how this would work:
Example 1: Jose is filing his Marriage AOS petition on May 2nd 2023. He has not filed taxes for 2022 yet but did file for an extension. In this scenario, Jose's most recent tax year would be [current year -2], which means 2023-2 = 2021.
Example 2: Maria is filing her AOS petition on August 1st 2023 and has filed taxes for prior year 2022. In this scenario, Maria's most recent tax year would be [Current year -], which means 2023-1 = 2022
What about second and third tax years?
This is easy! your second and third tax year are always going to be most recent tax year -1 and most recent tax -2. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Example: If your most recent tax year is 2022 then the other 2 tax years have to be 2021 and 2020.
If you were ineligible to file taxes in one of these years, it is OK but you must still pick the correct tax year per this rule.
