NWR: Marriage & Taxes

Since I am now a married woman, my husband an I have been trying to get things in order legally.

For all you tax savvy LI members who are willing to give free advice..I wanted to know is it better to change W4 to 'married & taxed at a higher single rate' or just 'married'. I do not know anything about taxes. We usually just file using turbo tax. Also, is it better to file jointly or separately. As of now my husband and I only rent an apartment & we own no properties. We usually take the standard deduction. I do not want to owe money. Right now we have 0 allowances and we always come close to owing money, student loans is the only thing that saves us. It really ****** being single with no children during tax time! TIA

Congratulations! And kudos for being proactive financially. I'm not a professional but i can tell you what happened to us. Hubby and I used to get a nice return each year (each of us claiming single- no deductions on the W4 prior to our civil marriage* [November of last year]....meaning more tax $ taken from each of our pay checks). When tax time came, we filed as married. For 2012, we only got about 30% of our previous return. Our accountant ran our numbers both jointly and separately; 'joint' gave the better return. We now file married and taxed at higher rate. I hate income tax surprises.

*Planning my 'Big Fat Catholic Wedding' now. :)

---

Posted by simba301

I usually get a nice federal and state return because our house is in my name. FH gets a much smaller federal return and always end up owing the state. We have used Turbo Tax for the past few years, but I think for our first year as married, I'm going to find an accountant to file for us. I count on that nice return to help us pay the house taxes, so I don't want any surprises either, lol. Thanks for the info!

---

this is our situation too.

I'm a CPA and will say that filing separately, when married, is more likely to raise some 'red flags' and can increase audit risk. That option was put in place to separate yourself from a spouse who may be taking illegal tax positions and/or for individuals who are legally separated. It's intention was not to allow for better tax breaks. So just keep that in mind.

At the end of the day, as long as one spouse does not make significantly less money or more money than the other - it shouldn't matter. And most of the times, there are certain limitations in the tax code that prevent you from taking certain tax positions anyway (i.e. student loans - if you are married and file separately you are not permitted to take the deduction) I think they do this to prevent the very thing I described above.


It stinks and IMO is not fair...My advice - if you want to pay less tax move out of NY, especially Long Island lol, we get killed!!!.

---

Posted by db276952

I'm a CPA and will say that filing separately, when married, is more likely to raise some 'red flags' and can increase audit risk. That option was put in place to separate yourself from a spouse who may be taking illegal tax positions and/or for individuals who are legally separated. It's intention was not to allow for better tax breaks. So just keep that in mind.

At the end of the day, as long as one spouse does not make significantly less money or more money than the other - it shouldn't matter. And most of the times, there are certain limitations in the tax code that prevent you from taking certain tax positions anyway (i.e. student loans - if you are married and file separately you are not permitted to take the deduction) I think they do this to prevent the very thing I described above.


It stinks and IMO is not fair...My advice - if you want to pay less tax move out of NY, especially Long Island lol, we get killed!!!.

---

I am an accountant as well and I agree with the post above.

I have never seen a married couple save taxes by filing separate. You will usually pay more taxes by filing separate.