How to fill out form 8801 when going from single to married filing jointly?

[jpd236]

I got married in 2019, and we plan to file a joint return this year. Last year my spouse and I both filed as single. My spouse had to pay AMT due to exercising incentive stock options (ISOs). We're hoping to claim a credit for this AMT this year, since we're well under the AMT threshold on our joint return.

How do I enter this situation into TurboTax? Under the "Credit for AMT Paid in Prior Year" flow, it asks for amounts from my 2018 tax return; do I just add them together from both of our returns? Then it asks for my 2018 filing status; is it correct to say "Single" given that the information is sourced from two different returns?

[JotikaT2 · Accepted solution]

Yes, you will need to add up the amounts for both of your prior year returns.  Yes, you can reflect the filing status as single as that is how the returns were filed last year.

[selfreporter]

What if reversed (last year MFJ and this year MFS)? Can we split prior year AMT credit evenly between the two? Or only the main filer last year can use the AMT credit and the other cannot?