Refiling Married Filing Separately (MFS) to Married Filing Jointly (MFJ) in two different states

[maxweb69]

My spouse and I have been informally and amicably separated for 7 years.  I live in CA and she moved back to NY.  Since we have separate primary residences in different states, and we maintain separate household finances, for the past two years we decided to file with TurboTax as Married Filing Separately (MFS), which simplified our tax preparation since we each needed only one state return, and our refunds or taxes owed were separate as well.

The total tax burden of filing MFS versus filing jointly (MFJ) was almost the same, but since my spouse is older and now on Medicare she is greatly penalized by IRMAA for filing MFS, with the two-year IRMAA lookback.  We have already filed returns for TY2023 and TY2024 and received federal and state refunds, but we think it would be greatly advantageous to re-file both 2023 and 2024 tax years as MFJ to lower the Medicare IRMAA bracket.

I have two questions:

1. How do we get started with re-filing 2023 and 2024 returns as MFJ instead of MFS?
2. I created separate TurboTax accounts for each of us filing MFS.  Is there a way to import the data entered for our existing MFS returns into a new account filing MFJ so that we don’t have to start completely over from scratch?

Thanks!

[RobertB4444]

The good news is that you only have to amend one of the returns into the married-filing-joint return.  So amend the one that has the most data already entered.

Because you can't import the other person's data.  You're going to have to re-enter it from scratch.  

The other thing that you should know is that if you did not live together for the last six months of the year you are allowed to file as single for the year.  Since you've lived apart all of this time you actually could just both file as single.

@maxweb69 

[maxweb69]

Thanks for the reply.  I don't think either of us can legally file as Single at this time, despite living separately for the past few years, because our separation is informal.  We are not legally separated in the eyes of the government, since we haven't filed a legal decree, and there are penalties for filing as Single while still married and not officially divorced or separated.

We'll figure out which return should be amended based on the amount of work to re-input the other's information.  Thanks again.

[RobertB4444]

You're right, I'm sorry.  That is only with dependents.

Here are some instructions for amending 2024.  2023 will have to be printed and mailed.  Here are some instructions to help with that.

@maxweb69