How do my ex-spouse and I apportion 2019 refund to this year's federal tax return as divorced singles if last year was filed as married filing jointly?

[mdl3cali]

Do we apportion it equally for our separate returns?

[mdl3cali]

Not sure why my question is truncated. Here it is again: My spouse and I had filed taxes for 2019 as married filing jointly and applied a part refund of $3000 towards 2020 federal tax. We now file separately as head of household and single for 2020 after our divorce. How much of the 2019 refund shall each of us apply to our 2020 federal tax return? Do we apportion it equally?

[Mike9241]

The treatment of overpayments on past jointly filed tax returns is similar to the IRS's guidance for estimated tax payments. Sec. 6402(a) provides that overpayments should be credited against the tax liability from the person who gave rise to the overpayment. In other words, an overpayment cannot be credited to the person who did not pay tax to generate the overpayment. If both spouses contributed to the overpayment on a prior jointly filed return, the overpayment needs to be apportioned to each spouse proportionate to his or her tax obligations in the current year. This calculation would be similar to that of the estimated tax payment calculation described above from IRS ­Publication 505. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p505.pdf 

A problem identified in numerous cases is that the IRS will ignore these calculations and simply allocate the entire overpayment to the first taxpayer (on the previous joint return) without allocating any of the overpayment to the spouse. This can be the case even if a suitable calculation was done and documented on the taxpayer's and spouse's separate returns.  

what a tax pro would likely do is two married filing separate or single returns for 2019 to compute how much of the $3,000 is allocable to each. (some pro software can do this automatically from a joint return). if the irs allocates differently for 2020 they calculate what one should pay the other   

[mdl3cali]

Thanks for the advise!

[Opus 17]

If you have access to the 2019 software installed on your own computer, you can switch to forms mode and call up the “what if” worksheet. This will simulate two married filing separately tax returns.  The final refund numbers would not be exactly correct, but it would give you an idea of the approximate ratio to use in dividing the tax refund. Basically, if both withholdings were roughly in balance, then the refund would be a portioned based on your proportion of income. However, if one person‘s withholding was much larger than it needed to be, that person might be responsible for a larger share of the refund.

however, if you don’t have access to the 2019 software, I don’t know that it is worth it to buy it just to do the calculation.I would probably just divide the refund based on your proportion of incomes, or any other way that you can mutually agree. I don’t see the IRS getting involved unless one of you complains or that you fail to report the total amount between the two of you.