I have completed our taxes using Desktop TurboTax and have, as always, used Married Filing Jointly.
What I'd like to know if there's an *easy* way for TT to calculate whether filing Separately would be better (similar to how it computes whether Itemized or Standard Deductions are better). I can't believe it wouldn't do that, but nothing I can find seems to indicate it does.
It seems like most of the normal reasons for not filing separately (differing limits and deductions) wouldn't hurt us, and there seems to be some reason that filing separately would help (my wife inherited some taxable IRA money which didn't have taxes withheld and she would be a lower bracket).
I guess I could just do separate returns and compare, but a) why is TT not doing that automatically???, and b) I don't know how to compute things like:
- Who takes the deduction for our child?
- How do you divide things that are reported in both of our names (e.g. interest, dividends, mortgage interest, property taxes, charitable donations, state tax refunds from last year)?
There seem to be some online tools, but that would require re-entering all of my tax information...
