Married Filing Separately When Only Pays for the Insurance

[OldFatDog]

I am working on examples of Married Filing Jointly and Married Filing Separately. We have health insurance through her employer. When filing separately can she claim the entire cost while I have no insurance costs to claim?

[xmasbaby0 · Accepted solution]

If you are filing married filing separately you both have to itemize or both have to use standard deduction.   So unless you are in a community property state, divvy up the itemized deductions to suit yourselves.  Either split the medical insurance premiums or have only one of you use them.   It likely will not have any effect.  You have to meet a high threshold to get any benefit from entering medical expenses.  Only the amount that is OVER 7.5% of your AGI even counts.

Are you aware that filing separate returns means you lose certain credits like education credits, earned income credit and the childcare credit?  Married filing separately is usually the worst way to file.

And if one of you itemizes the other spouse has to itemize too even if you do not have enough deductions to exceed your standard deduction.

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/married/help/is-it-better-for-a-married-couple-to-file-jointly-or-...

[OldFatDog]

Thanks for the reply. She has an extreme dental phobia and will only go to a family dentist which is 254 miles one way from where she lives while I am maybe 10 miles from that office. Also she had major dental work last year so with costs and mileage will have gone over 7.5% (if I am figuring this correctly and that is a large part of why I am asking this question.) So, if she takes the insurance premiums, dentist fees and mileage itemizing should work for her while itemizing does nothing for me. Medical reasons kept me  from expected income, etc., etc. so am poor as a church mouse.