US tax of UK citizen who is spouse of US citizen resident in UK

Can anyone help with advice re US IRS tax liability and obligations of a UK citizen who is the spouse of US citizen resident (ILR) in UK?

In most cases you have two choices:

1. Treat your spouse as a nonresident alien and use the "Married Filing Separately" status, which would keep your spouse "off the radar" from the IRS. Normally MFS results in higher taxes than filing jointly, but it won't matter if via the FEIE and/or FTC all of your US tax liability would be negated anyway.

2. Elect to treat your spouse as a resident alien (an ITIN will be required) so you can file jointly. This may work better if you have income that can neither be excluded nor taxed by the UK where you could get a full credit against your US tax (and your spouse has little or no income) or you qualify for a refundable tax credit that you can't get by filing separately.

For the UK spouse of a USC resident in the UK, it can vary between nothing to report to a full disclosure of all income and assets. Two questions are of importance: first, how does the USC report to the IRS, married filing separate or married filing joint, and second, are there any joint accounts?

Married filing separate with no joint accounts equates to no reporting for the UKC. Married filing seperate with joint accounts equates to the USC reporting the joint accounts, possibly to both the IRS and FinCEN. Married filing joint equates to the UKC spouse electing to be considered a US Person for IRS and Treasury purposes with a full reporting obligation of all worldwide income and assets, for every subsequent year (unless the election is revoked, a once in a lifetime option).

Xpost with Kelly85