Hi Kfarr55,
Thank you for asking. When filing tax with a dependent, married filing jointly usually have more advantages when married filing separately; however, it can be different from cases to cases. Child and Dependent Care Credit is one of the examples that you may not be able to claim the Child and Dependent Care Credit if your filing status is filing married separately.
- If your filing status is married filing separately, you cannot both claim your child as dependent. Each dependent can only be claimed by one tax payer. To find out who should be claiming the dependent, you may use our tax calculator to find out what will be the best option for your family.
- IRS only allows tax payer to use HSA funds to pay for qualified medical expenses for any dependents the tax payer claim on his tax return. If you are planning to use your husband's HSA for the medical expenses with tax-free, your child will need to be his tax return. Please see Publication 969.
- Per IRS rules, the total that each family can elect for a Dependent Care FSA (DCFSA) must not exceed $5,000 per household ($2,500 each if married and filing separately). Therefore, you must ensure that you and your spouse limit your individual elections to total no more than $5,000 combined. When only one spouse is eligible for an FSA for dependent care, as the employer will generally not allow you to defer more than $5,000 per year into the account. For your case, you will need to claim the child as dependent in order to claim the credit.
We hope the above information helps and answer your questions. Please feel free to contact TurboTax if you have any further questions. We are always here to assist you. Thank you for choosing TurboTax and we wish you have a wonderful day!
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