Posted: 1/17/2010 10:42:55 AM EDT
| My fiancee and I have been living together for over a year now. We plan on getting married this summer. Would we benifit from filing a joint return for the past year? |
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Yes, I agree.
I would print out 1040 copies and try it out both ways. Most scenarios filing jointly is going to be better, but I have heard of others where people were advised to file separately. Hard to say without knowing the specifics. EDIT: For the record though, the most general cases where MFS is better than MFJ (again, they are few and far between) are when you have a % of AGI to overcome before you can deduct certain amounts. Examples of this would be, the most common, unusually high itemized deductions (2% of AGI floor), but also medical costs (7.5% floor) and casualty/theft (10% floor). You will lose a good number of benefits by not filing jointly, so you really have to be sure of this. Also, you should have to BOTH choose to itemize or go with the standard deduction on each of your returns, so no mix-and-match elections there. |