We plan to file Married Filing Separately, and I have read that if one spouse itemizes, so must the other. What does this mean? What if I don't have anything to itemize? We use TurboTax, so it determines if I itemize or not. Help!
2007-02-01 23:56:41 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Business & Finance ➔ Taxes ➔ United States
This depends. When your married sometimes for a bigger return is better to file jointly. In order to itemize you need to have pretty many deductions to itemize with. I thought this same thing when I first got married. Now 17 yrs later we are still filing married and jointly. It also depends on how your pays are set up, how much Fed. is taken out. We found out by filing jointly and at our employers claiming single and 0 most taxes are taken out. Yes it hurts during the year but when combined at the ends year for taxes does help in big way. We had ours done as a just to see, how much we both would get if we filed single. Turned out we both would of payed out due to the fact alone we did not have enough deductions for itemizing. It is something you need to take time to do for at least the first 2 yrs. of marriage to see which would work the best for you and your spouse. If you have the H N R disc for the computer or go to an H N R block they can easily help you out the first few times. I am not familiar with the Turbo Tax I deal with the HnR.
To Itemize means your doing the long form seperately. Which means if 1 does it the other one has to also. If you do not have anything to itemize then i suggest filing normally and try to come up with as much as you can then compare what the amounts would be filing married / seperately vrs married / jointly. Each marriage is different. Also depends if you own your own business to. There your talking a different story and you might want to consider just getting an accountant and handing him all the papers for filing taxes. It's not as confusing as a lot of people think it is. Specially with this law and that law tax change.
Hope this helped some.
2007-02-02 00:17:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you are married and filing separately, and your wife itemizes, then your standard deduction is not $5,150, but zero. Therefore, if you have nothing to itemize, you would enter "0" in the line for your standard deduction.
Even though your itemizations may not add up to the standard deduction, you should put whatever you have on the line for the itemized deductions. At least, you would put what state tax was withheld from your pay.
TurboTax will take you through the itemizations. If you indicate you are MFS, it will not let you take any standard deduction. It will transfer your state tax, and anything else you can itemize, onto the line for your itemized deductions.
2007-02-02 00:12:42 · answer #2 · answered by ninasgramma 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
You can override (or should be able to) the Turbo Tax recommendation to itemize. It will do a comparison between itemizing and taking the standard deduction and tell you which is the best way to go. Simply tell it what you want to do.
You would probably be better off filing as Married Filing Jointly.
What you should do is set it up both ways and show her the difference. It sounds like you just got married and she has always filed a separate single return so that is all she knows. It might be a very foolish move, but you would have to run two sets of tax returns, one as Separate returns and one as joint to see the difference. If it works out better as joint and she still wants to do separate, you better start thinking about a divorce now, because her thick-headedness and stubborness will only lead to major problems later on.
She is still thinking as a single person: what's hers is hers and what's yours is get out of my life. She will probably want to take a separate vacation too.
2007-02-02 00:07:36 · answer #3 · answered by Kokopelli 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I assume you have some very good reason for filing separately - if not, file a joint return, you'll save money overall.
But if you want to file separately, then if she itemizes, you can't take the normal standard deduction. If you don't have anything to itemize, you have to put zero on the line for standard or itemized deductions.
2007-02-02 12:36:00 · answer #4 · answered by Judy 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If your wife itemizes, you MUST itemize.
You can override the standard deduction to the itemized deduction on turbotax.
2007-02-02 08:44:53 · answer #5 · answered by whymewhynow 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
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2007-02-03 19:57:19 · answer #6 · answered by gautaminside 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
calculate your tax from here
2007-02-03 20:59:18 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋