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us citizen married to non-resident alien; how do i file taxes?
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from what you've described, your spouse is a non-resident alien for us tax purposes. you have two choices: use the nonresident spouse treated as resident election and file as married filing jointly. since your spouse doesn't have, and doesn't currently qualify for, an ssn, he/she will need to apply for an itin together with the tax filing. note that by becoming a resident alien, your spouse's worldwide income the whole year would be subject to us taxes, and would need to be reported on your joint tax filing, though he/she will be able to use the foreign earned income exclusion to exclude $100k of her foreign earned income, since he/she will have been out of the us for 330 days in a 12-month period. or, file as married filing separately. you write "nra" for your spouse's ssn on your tax return. as a nonresident alien, if your spouse doesn't have any us income, he/she doesn't have to file a us tax return, and doesn't need to apply for an itin. which one is better is up to you to figure out.
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