Tax Tips: Married Filing Separately is Married Filing Stupidly
Let me give you a disclaimer. A professional who is familiar with your individual situation may advise you differently. By all means, take the advice of a professional you knows you personally over mine! However, for the majority of Americans, "Married Filing Separately" means "Married Filing Stupidly".
Sometimes, you can't help it. Most of the people I see that need to file separately, do so as a matter of reality, rather than of choice. If you cannot contact your spouse, or if your spouse is too hostile to agree on anything (much less a tax return) you are still responsible for filing taxes. So you must file as "Married Filing Separately". Then your spouse is still responsible to file his or her own taxes, but at least you have fulfilled your obligation and filed your own taxes. However, this comes at a severe cost. Here is a list of the things you are giving up by filing as "Married Filing Separately":
You cannot claim the standard deduction if your spouse itemizes deductions; you must either also itemize your deductions, or in a few cases take half the standard deduction.
You cannot take the child and dependent care expenses credit
You cannot take the earned income credit
You cannot (in most cases) take the credit or exclusion for adoption expenses
You cannot take the education credits (Hope and Lifetime Learning)
You cannot deduct interest paid on a qualified student loan
You cannot exclude interest income from qualified US savings bonds used for higher education expenses
You cannot take the credit for the elderly or disabled
You cannot take the tuition and fees deduction
You may have to include, as taxable income, more of social security benefits than would be included on a joint return
You cannot roll over amounts from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA
To add insult to injury, you must still provide the full name and social security number of your legal spouse.
One final note, if you are afraid you are doomed to be "Married Filing Stupidly" is that in some cases a married tax payer can be "considered unmarried" and may be able to file as "Head of Household". This can apply even if they are not divorced or legally separated. A full discussion of this status is beyond the scope of this article, but the general requirements include living apart from your spouse for at least half the year, and paying more than half the cost of keeping up a home with a qualifying person (generally your child).
If you have experiences with being "Married Filing Separately", please leave me a comment and let me know.
Published by Lynn Glessner
Recently left the IT field to become a SAHM with two kids, multiple pets, and one man-child running a music production business. View profile
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20 Comments
Post a CommentI 'm married and have for years filed separately. My return is between $4-5000.00 each year. He does his own taxes and I do mine, plus I file head of household. Next year filing is going to be totally different. The way I understand it, you will pay a flat tax, no return. The gov't wants your money which I think SUCKS! I can't even file my taxes until Feb. 14th because the gov't and the IRS are still trying to figure out the mortage interest. Next year if the gov't gets their way you will not be able to claim interest on your 1st and 2nd interest you have paid into your mortgage. You will not be able to claim any medical expenses, those are my two biggest deductions. Everytime we turn around, the screw gets tighter and tighter.
I have back taxes and very low income bracket. My new spouse has highter income bracket and itemizes. I do not want spouse to lose refund or become responsible for my back taxes. Married filing seperate is our best option.
im married and have 2 kids my husband and i recently separated going to file for divorce i now live somewhere else with my 2kids he wants to file married and separately and each claim one kid are we allowed to do that and would that hurt us in long run where we would have to pay in
Interestingly, my wife and I will net a $600 larger overall refund by filing separately, due to a large refund of New York State tax offsetting a small federal penalty. We don't have any of the deductions that are disallowed by MFS, so that doesn't hurt us as much as some others.
Hello is it not wise to file seperate but married if my spouse owes back taxes. We have been filing seperate to avoid my return being garnished as well as his. What should we do?
I just married in 2008 and had huge losses in the stock market. Unfortunately I don't see a future with my husband and I am worried that if I file jointly, I will have to split my deductions from my losses with him. The losses will carry over for years to (since I can only deduct $3k per year) come but occurred in the year we were married. Does anyone know if this is right - will 1/2 my losses be allocated to him if we file jointly? Or after we divorce, does loss carryover stay with me?
For Jack - If one of you itemizes - then you both have to itemize. If the itemized expense (e.g Mortgage Ineterest) is paid from a joint account - then you need to split it 50/50. Sounds like maybe you took 100% of the deductions for yourself - and I think that could lead to trouble. I was playing with the deduction split-up to get my spouse's income right at the $32,550 tax bracket line - which would be optimal. After reading further on how to split the itemized deductions - I decided to go with 50/50 instead.
Because of the income limits to claim the child tax credit ($1000 for 1 child) - it was better for me to file seperately. My wife's income (after splitting the itemized deductions 50/50) falls below the threshold - and she ends up with the $100 credit. In the end - we do lose some small deductions as stated in the article - and don't net a $1000 gain - but we still do better than MFJ by a good amount of coin. We live in Michigan, and I see no difference in our state return for MFS vs. MFJ.
My hubby and I have filed jointly using TurboTax for 5 years. This year I went to file and it said we owed the IRS $1300! I went back and tried it married filing seperately and he only owed $12 and I owed $300. We don't qualify for any of the credits anyways because together we make too much money to get the EIC and none of the other stuff applies. We live in Texas and do not pay state taxes if that helps. Much better!
I agree with the comment that you didn't do you homework. In the state of Ohio, my husband and I each receive a #300+ refund by filing separately. If we filed jointly Ohio would keep the $600. I agree there is little difference for the federal tax.