Why Some Married Couples File Taxes Separately | WSJ Your Money Briefing

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Instead of filing one tax return, a growing number of married couples are choosing “married, filing separately” status.

Wall Street Journal tax reporter Laura Saunders joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss.

Photo illustration: Kiersten Essenpreis

0:00 How often do married couples file taxes separately?
2:39 What are the benefits for a married couple filing separately?
4:19 What would filing separately mean for someone’s tax bill?
5:51 What are some downsides to filing taxes separately?
7:03 What happens if your marital status changes during the tax year

Your Money Briefing
WSJ's personal-finance podcast features the news that affects your money and what you do with it, breaking down complicated money questions from spending and saving to investing and taxes.

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Whether you’re doing jointly or separate, go through the process together so you are on the same page about finances

alexander

Thanks for this! My long term partner and I were weary about getting married because of her 100k of student loan debt based on income repayments. It seems we'll be fine getting married as long as we just file separately.

CannabisTechLife

Another reason to file separately is if you are a U.S. citizen living outside the U.S. and your spouse is a non-resident alien (non-U.S. citizen or green card holder). This keeps your foreign spouse out of the U.S. tax system.

yvrrtw

Glad Saunders mentioned the Roth IRA. We are being told that we should file separately, but I want to be able to contribute to our Roth IRA without having to find loopholes. My retirement savings is more important than saving a few dollars now.

JuanWayTrips

How may one file if you are legally separated and living apart in different states?

miketracy

My expouse filed single for 2022 and we were divorced in Jan of 2023. I didn't know and filed married filing separately and now I owe because I recieved a tax credit with health coverage. Can I ammend my taxes since we had already filed for the divorce in September of 2022. I have lived in another state since Feb of 2022.

estherdavis

It’s to do with tax breaks right? Or just keeping separate finances I guess.

amyx

1:20 "...CONGRESS MAKES THE TAX LAW. THE IRS ENFORCES IT!..."

richcampus

Why even bother with the married filing jointly option? Why not streamline the tax code to remove it altogether and not have people try to guess or do two trial tax returns to see which way is better?

zhang_han

It’s very common to file tax separately. Marriage has got nothing do with Tax. It’s completely a different set of document with the respective city authority where the marriage had been registered. There are apparently no benefits filing jointly or separately.

1) More parties one brings out in one return, more difficult it becomes.
2) Filing separately also has other benefits, like one may heave a free-riding of the basics, without spending a single penny.
3) Tax return benefits ( if any ) can be assigned to a nominated person in your filing. This may not be the spouse.
4) Joint Retunes makes it easier to joint endeavours ( if any ), like mortgage payments ( if any ). The underlying rationale is simple; bigger income, lesser repayment instalments; provided both have excellent repayment records history.

m.fazlurrahman