taxes--married filing joint?? or seperate?

I appreciate that... It was just a quick glance on my part at the tables, rough estimation of taxable income jointly and separately... We're closer to the second scenario, where I make quite a bit more, though my wife doesn't have taxes withheld at 2 or her 3 jobs, so that kinda messes things up a bit. I will still likely run them separately to see how it would play out.

 

If you've got time to kill....do it both ways and see how they compare.

It'll probably vary for every situation.

We've always filed jointly. Eventually, life (and taxes) can get more complicated. It's just easier to do it jointly and overall saves.

 

Figure your taxes out both ways to see which works out better for you. There is no one way that is best for everyone. It all depends on your situation. There are some exemptions you can only take when filing jointly OR if one of you itemizes, you both have to.

Even if you got married on 31 Dec, you would be considered as married for the whole year.

I used to figure them out both ways for couples and most times, filing jointly worked out better.

Good luck.

 

Ive read that if both of yalls incomes are close then file seperatly.
if one makes alot more than the other like 20k vs.35-40k then its better to file jointly.
I think there was an article on msn about it

 

Just for shits & giggles I changed my filing status to married filing seperately.

Right now I owe $53 federal.....when I did the change of status................

IT SHOWED I OWE $7127!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Think I'll stick with the joint!
(for the record I make about double what my wife does)

 

The so-called Marriage Penalty doesn't exist for most people anymore. In most cases, filing jointly means a lower tax liability than filing separately.

If two married people each make hundreds of thousands of dollars, the differnce between filing jointly or separately can be pretty large. For couples who make 'normal' amounts of money, the difference is either zero, or quite small, even if one person's income is substantially more than the other's.

The attached tables help illustrate how the difference grows at high incomes. Each uses 2008 income tax rates.

• TABLE 1 shows savings by filing Married/Separate for couples who make approximately the same income. As you can see, you save nothing by filing separately until you each earn $75k+. If you're EACH making TONS of money, the savings can be quite a lot.

• TABLE 2 shows how much you SAVE by filing a JOINT return, assuming income levels are different. In each case, these couples making between $75k combined and $175k combined saved money by filing a joint return.

• TABLE 3 is similar to the previous one, except that the income for Party 2 is not held constant. As you can see, the savings by filing joint becomes pretty small once the lower wage earner's income reaches about $40k. You'll also see that there is a slight savings when filing separate in the bottom row of the table.

I think the best idea has already been said... each person should and inclincation, you should run the numbers both ways. I'll bet that most of us will pay less filing jointly, though.

Sometimes it's not all about the money, either. The article I posted in a previous post pointed to qualitative reasons married couples might consider filing separately even if they will owe a little more tax.

Sorry for the brain dump... Like I said before, I'm a CPA so this stuff gets me all excited!

 

well i appreciate everything....Just got her w2's back so we'll start to check everything.

hope its good!