How do you change the marital status of a previously filed tax return? I tried to amend it but it will not change the martial status.

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
November 11, 2020
1 reply
6 views

No text available

TurboTax Self Employed Online

Critter-3

Level 15

To change the status you need to make corrections in the MY INFO section ... what filing status are you changing from and to ?

jfaucb1Author

Level 2

I am changing from head of household to married filing separately. I need to change this for filling out my daughter financial aid paperwork for college. It doesn’t show a change has been made when I try to complete the amendment. Would I need to hard write it in?

rjs

Level 15

Did the college financial aid office say that you have to change your filing status? Make sure they're right before you amend your tax return. College financial aid offices often say that a tax return is wrong when there is really nothing wrong with it. There is a surprising amount of ignorance and misinformation about tax returns among the staff in financial aid offices.

It's possible to file as head of household even though you are married, provided that you meet the requirements to be "considered unmarried." Basically to be "considered unmarried," all of the following must be true.

You paid more than half the cost of keeping up your home for the tax year.
Your spouse didn't live in your home during the last 6 months of the tax year.
Your home was the main home of your child, stepchild, or foster child for more than half the year.
You must be able to claim the child as a dependent. However, you meet this test if you can't claim the child as a dependent only because the noncustodial parent can claim the child.

For more details see "Considered Unmarried" in IRS Publication 501 at the following link.

Considered Unmarried

If you answered the questions in TurboTax correctly, and it said that you could file as head of household, it's probably right.

If you do have to change your filing status, you can't just write in the change. Changing your filing status to married filing separately would change many things on your tax return, including your standard deduction and your refund or the amount of tax, and it might eliminate some deductions or credits that you claimed.