Taxes- newly married

Re: Taxes- newly married

• CuriousKiddosMama mod

  

  January 2014

  File jointly this year. It's easier. And you can do it online yourself if you didn't have anything odd happen this year.
  

  

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• VadersValkyrie member

  

  January 2014

  We're going to my family's accountant (got married in December), but so far everyone has told me that filing jointly is probably the way to go.  I make more money than H, and actually have been getting whacked on my taxes because, according to the state of CT, I make "too much" for a single person.  
  
  My question is whether I should change the deductions out of my paycheck (married, filing jointly as opposed to single) or leave it the same.  Hence, accountant.

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• hoffse member

  

  January 2014

  I would file jointly.  It's easier.  And there are a number of tax breaks that you don't qualify for if you file as married filing separately.  Not sure if you will be eligible for any of those, but you never know.

  
  

  Only thing about filing jointly: keep in mind that you will both be jointly liable for any taxes still due.  Please don't just sign the return without looking at it and/or following up to make sure any taxes still owed are paid.  I've had clients do that in the past, and it ends up biting them in the butt.  But as long as you keep that in mind, married filing jointly is almost always the best way to file.  

  

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• Jferjamey member

  

  January 2014 edited January 2014

  Married filing jointly, hands down. The tax laws are written to benefit married filing jointly filers more than any other status.

  
  

  As a married couple, you would almost never benefit financially from filing separately.  You'd likely owe more taxes if you filed separately than if you were both single. Basically, the only reason you'd file separately is if one of you have a lot of business income and potential liabilities (from a partnership, etc) that they didn't want the other person exposed to.

  
  

  Something to keep in mind is that your DH probably use to itemize (if he was single and owned a house, his itemized deductions may have been > the standard deduction). Now that there are two of you, but the same itemized deductions for the house, you'll probably switch to the standard deduction. 

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• vlagrl29 member

  

  January 2014

  another file jointly thumbs up!

  
  

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• Erikan73 member

  

  January 2014

  Surprising I did our taxes both way, joint & seperate, and we're going to be better by over $200 on just our federal taxes alone by filing seperate. I'm not saying to file seperate, I'm saying try it both ways. If you do it yourself, it doesn't take too much extra time to figure it out and in my area, most CPA's will run it automatically both ways for no extra change to see which way is better.

   

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