<prompt> Human: When I was 19 I got married and moved to Canada to be with my husband. We were young and dumb and didnt know anything about tax law obviously. We do our taxes with HR Block every year for piece of mind. Figured since I had no American income I had no reason to file American taxes. Oops. So now were trying to get my husband a green card and they need me to have filed with them, and I havent. I havent made over 20k in any of the years weve been up here. HR Block says only the last 3 years will be relevant and I wont owe anything because my income was too low, but theyre going to charge me over 400 a year to do those 3 years. Is it possible to do this myself without completely fucking myself over more? What are my options here? And of course, thank you so much for any advice.  <response>: As someone whos lived overseas for many years and didnt file taxes for the first few, you have a couple options.The first is to DIY it. Youre going to need information about your income to whatever extent possible from those years, but if its only 20k max, itll be entirely covered by the foreign earned income exemption. In fact, you could be making up to something like 95k and still be covered. Do the research on the IRS site about how to file, find the historical forms from each year and send them in. Id advise filing for all the years you missed or at least as many years as are relevant to the IRS I seem to remember its seven, but I could be mistaken.The second is to hire a CPA in the US to handle it for you. This is easier for you, but its also going to be an easy set of returns, and it might not make sense for you financially given your income.Personally, I DIYd the years I missed, by researching it on irs.gov and elsewhere. I later hired a CPA in the US to handle my taxes. It runs me a couple hundred bucks a year, but its worth it to me especially relative to my income.My number-one messageadvice would be this: youre going to be OK. When I started getting my financial house in order many years ago, it felt like a daunting task, and I was also worried about shooting myself in the foot, filing something wrong, or having to pay large fines. It helped to approach it as if it were someone elses finances, and I was helping them take practical steps to fix things. That took some of the emotion out of it. Good luck. 