My wife and I got married in 2024. It's a second marriage for both of us after decades married to other people. This is the first time we are filing taxes since we married. I got the desktop version of TT because it has the "what if" feature that allows you to compare between filing separately or jointly. Because we each lived complicated financial lives before we married, we have not merged all of our finances. Even if we file jointly, we want to use this feature to figure out our proportional shares of taxes.
My question is how to get started on this process. Do we enter everything as though it's two separate returns, and then use the "what if" feature? (The link at the bottom of other related questions that purports to address this question goes nowhere.)
Enter both you and your spouse's information in TurboTax, then you will review the What If Worksheet.
Refer to the TurboTax Help article How can I compare Married Filing Jointly with Married Filing Separately? for specific instructions.