@Mike9241
In your guesswork MFS returns, did you take into consideration that they are in a community property state?
It's not clear whether the OP treated community income correctly in his/her MFS analysis. The OP said that Spouse 2 would have a lower tax rate on long-term capital gain. I don't understand why that would be, since all the income mentioned in the question would have to be split 50/50. But I have not done trial returns.
Based on my limited knowledge of community property, it seems to me that the two MFS returns would be identical, since all of the income has to be split equally between the two.
