The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: leomatthewadams on November 21, 2019, 03:28:26 PM
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I just married my spouse earlier in November, and we had separate accounts and income throughout the entire year until then. Now, we’ve been doing stuff together. But, when it comes to dealing with my taxes in 2019, how should I file? Should I just say forget it and do “married filing separately” or would I be better off saying “married?” Help me out friends!
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As with a lot of things, it depends. Generally, filing as MFJ will be better.
The early versions of the 2019 tax programs are out. Buy one and run it through both scenarios.
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You will almost always be better off filing jointly.
“Married Filing Seperately” is basically designed to protect you from liability if your spouse is in the mob or doing something illegal.
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Sorry, I just had to reply to this even though it's old, this info needs to be here..
Student loans is a major reason why people would file married filing separately. It's hardly because they are doing something "illegal" or they're "in the mob". It's because the liability of the (federal) student loans is only on one partner- the spouse that took them out. Certain income-based repayment plans such as PAYE calculate the loan payment based on that person's income- aka not penalizing the other spouse for a debt that's not theirs. This can lead to thousands of dollars savings per month potentially!! Remember, in the US federal student loans on any IBR plan is really a tax (10-15%).
I'd say refer to student loan planner site/pod for more info on this, lots of good stuff. They even have a spreadsheet calculator you can download to see if there's a "penalty" for MFS or not based on both of your AGI's and any fed student loans you have.