Married filing jointly, car that I use for work and business is on my wife name. Should I choose "I own the vehicle" or "This vehicle isn't mine" for mileage deduction?

[rksukhani11]

Big difference in refunds if I select that "I own the vehicle" as compared to " The vehicle isn't mine" (its registered on my wife's name). So since we are married and filing jointly, should is it considered as my vehicle?

[AndreaG · Accepted solution]

Yes. Because you are filing jointly, you should say yes to owning the car.

[rksukhani11]

So we have 2 cars. One I drive is on my wife's name and one she drives is on my name. And as I looked back on my past year's return, I mentioned that very same car as not owning it.
So do i need to amend my last years tax return? Or I can say that from this year it has become my primary vehicle and I can go ahead with filing it as OWNING? Help will be appreciated. Thanks

[AndreaG]

Yes. I would amend that tax return. Your filing status for the return that you amend, will need to be married filing jointly in order for you to say that you own it. However, you can change your filing status to married filing jointly if you had filed as married filing separately.

[rksukhani11]

I had filed my last years return as married filing jointly but only thing that I showed was that for my business when I used my wifes car, I considered it as "not my car", which gave me less refund back which is ok. This year I have used her car majorly for my business, SO I want to show it as Owning Car as that gives more mileage deduction... Will that be okay?

[ValerieE]

It will be fine for you to show that you are owning the car this year since you are filing a joint return.  This is true even if you said you did not own the car in a prior year.  You can amend your prior return to claim the higher refund, but it is not required.