I live in Tx, married in 2016 & my husband owes back child supp. Filed injured spouse 2017 & they still took his & half of my return. Is there a way to keep from happen?

[hrwarren2001]

My husband and I married in May 2016 and he had been out of work a few years before he met me so he owes about 10k in back child support. He works now and they take a little extra to catch it up, but he does still owe some, but again it is all from before we even met. Last year was our first year filing jointly and I filed an injured spouse form, but they still took allot of my refund as well. For instance, the refund was total $5300 and about $1300 should of been his and $4000 mine, but they only gave us $2200 back. Is there a way to keep that from happening again this year, but still be able to file jointly so we can get our earned income and child credits? We are in Texas?

[BMcCalpin]

The rules for how the injured spouse's part of the refund are complex in community property states (and in fact vary from state to state). Texas' rules were laid out in IRS Revenue Ruling 2004-74 (https://www.irs.gov/irb/2004-30_IRB#RR-2004-74)

I reviewed this last year, and as a gross generalization, the IRS seems to take not only the refund attributable to your husband's income, but also the refund attributable to half of your income. In the case where the wife makes less then the husband, this makes the refund that is actually returned to the wife very small.

Since the IRS makes the determination of how much to allocate to the husband's debt, there isn't much you can do about it. And it's likely that it's smart to continue to file married joint because the EIC and Child Tax credit will help pay off the amount in arrears all the faster.