Married Filing Separately, is there a catch?

[wdw_dine_junkie]

DH and I have been married 6 years. Every year I crunch the numbers and it always is to our advantage to file jointly.

This year, it looks like we'll get more back if I claim the house and the interest paid as well as the real extate taxes and file separately. So what's the catch? Can you really just pick and choose which way to file based on the best results? I don't want to do anything wrong, seems to good to be true.

If it matters, we have no children, only the house to deduct.

 

[Lintasare]

From what I understand Married filing Separately is for those who are legally separated or recently divorced. Though I am sure there is someone on the boards with more information than what I have.

 

[StephMK]

Hmmm, I'm not sure but I know when we used an accountant, he would figure it both ways. One year, it did work out better to file separate so we did. Hopefully, that wasn't against rules, we just trusted him to know.

 

[k_null81]

I would like to know the answer to this.

 

[wdw_dine_junkie]

oh uh, I think I found the catch.

Is this right? If one person itemizes, the other must itemize as well. I gave DH the standard dedction and I took all the itemized deductions. I guess you can't do that!

 

[churchstein]

Bingo, that is exactly the reason the regs are set up that way. It stops people from trying to do exactly what you wanted to do!

 

[wdw_dine_junkie]

Darn, it was too good to be true!

Sorry, to take up thread space, I am having a blonde day.

 

[Cheshire Figment]

Basically the only time that it is financially reasonable to file as MFS is if the person with the smaller income had a large amount of unreimbursed medical expenses or employment related legal expenses.

Since the medical and miscellaneous deductions have a floor related to Adjusted Gross Income, in that instance the lower floor increases the deduction.

Several years ago Judy had extensive dental work (implants) which were not covered by insurance. I did play a lot moving deductions between returns, but since my AGI was about $K80, if we had filed jointly the medical deductions floor would have been about $6,000 higher. And so, counting both Federal and State, we saved about $2,000 on our taxes by filing separate instead of joint.

Mike (CPA)

 

[msmayor]

Filing separately is usually only worth it if one of you has significant medical bills that normally wouldn't be deductible because of the 7.5% threshold. Filing separately lowers that threshold $$ amount and can make otherwise non-deductible medical costs now deductible.

 

[mickeyfan2]

Basically the only time that it is financially reasonable to file as MFS is if the person with the smaller income had a large amount of unreimbursed medical expenses or employment related legal expenses.

Since the medical and miscellaneous deductions have a floor related to Adjusted Gross Income, in that instance the lower floor increases the deduction.

I have not done our taxes yet, still waiting for stuff in the mail, but I am planning on doing our taxes separately for the first time. I had major surgery and most of our medical bills outlay this year are mine, was off from work without pay during the surgery and recovery and then got laid-off.

 

[Floridagal23]

From what I understand Married filing Separately is for those who are legally separated or recently divorced. Though I am sure there is someone on the boards with more information than what I have.

Nope. Has to do with taking the deductions (same - IE DH takes itemized, you take it also). It works to your advantage if one of you receives a huge amount of social security because you only have include a small portion of it when you file MFS.

 

[englishrose47]

If you file seperately can 1 claim 2 kids and the other claim 1. ?

 

[StephMK]

AH, so that was it. We did have a lot of medical bills that year & PT I make wayyyy less than DH. We may look into that this year since we got hit with numerous med bills again this year. Thanks for asking & those that answered!

 

[Coll0610]

Also, if you do MFS you can't contribute to a Roth - that's what got us last year. Otherwise it would have been better for us.

 

[chris1gill]

You also cannot take the child tax credit if you make over 55K and are filing Married filing separately... One big problem...

 

[mom2aredhead]

We currently live in 1 of the 5 boroughs of NYC because my husband's job has a residency requirement. We want to buy a house in NJ and move, renting him a room or apt to keep his "residence".
How in the world would we file our taxes. We would still want to deduct the mortgage interest on our primary residence (in NJ) but he would have to file as a NY resident? I guess married filing separately, but how much would we lose out? 1/2 of the FDNY lives in NJ, so I'm sure there's a way around it.
Other than getting divorced (kidding) - is this feasible?