Generally, filing jointly will give you a bigger refund or less taxes due.
When you file separately, your tax rate is higher and you won't be able to
claim:
On top of that, if you live in the community property states of Arizona,
California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, or
Wisconsin, you have to deal with community
property allocations and adjustments, which adds extra work and complexity
to your tax preparation chores.
Tip: Only taxpayers who were still legally married as of
December 31, 2015 are able to file as marrieds, whether jointly or separately.
Why would I want to file separately?
The main reason you'd want to file separately is to protect yourself from
inaccurate tax information reported by your spouse, or in cases where your
spouse refuses to file a joint return (or refuses to file, period) and you
don't want to get in trouble.
Also, when you file separately, your refund cannot be seized to pay off your
spouse's debts. However, filing jointly as an innocent or injured spouse can
head off refund seizures as well.
With all that in mind, you can try it both ways to see which filing status
works out better for the both of you. If you do this, also consider your state
return; in some cases, the taxes saved on the state return more than makes up
for the money lost on the federal, or vice-versa.
You can try the different ways with TurboTax's free calculator TaxCaster. It will give you the estimated tax
differences when filing either way.
Related Information:
