Hi @ptylamina - thanks for your question today.
The IRS uses your status at the end of the tax year (12/31/22) to determine what your allowable filing status is.
If you are still legally married on 12/31/22 and there is not a legal order of separation in place, then you will need to file as either married filing separately or married filing jointly.
I am presuming you will not be legally divorced or separated by 12/31/22. Obviously, if you are, then you can file as Head of Household and skip the rest of this discussion.
Even if you are not divorced or separated, there is an exception that would allow you to file as Head of Household if you and the spouse have not lived together at all during the second half of the year. You indicated that you separated recently, so this could be applicable or not depending on how recently. If the spouse moved out later than July, you wouldn't qualify for this provision for 2022.
As far as what you SHOULD do - if you qualify under the Head of Household exception, that is the cleanest option as you do not have to file jointly with the soon-to-be-ex without filing as married filing separately, which is generally disadvantageous with respect to credits.
If you don't qualify for the exception - that's a more difficult question. Here are some things to consider:
1. You can legally file as jointly, even if you don't live together, as long as you are not formally divorced or legally separated. However, this would require a high degree of trust between you and the ex. The return can only have one address on it, so one of you will have to trust the other to share all relevant IRS correspondence. The refund, if there is one, can only be sent one place. So you have to trust whoever receives it to share with the other spouse, or if it goes into a joint bank account, not to take more than their fair share. In addition, by filing jointly you are both jointly and severally liable for all of the tax that is assessed on the return and for either spouse underreporting. How well do you know what types of income your soon-to-be-ex has, and how much do you each trust the other to fully report all income? There are a lot of considerations that might make this a bad idea, even if it is allowed. Only you would know if this is something you'd considering doing given the person you would be filing with and the situation.
You can also compare the results of filing jointly and separately and see how much (if anything) filing separately costs you in taxes, to get a better idea of whether it's worth considering the joint filing.
You can use TaxCaster to help estimate the outcomes based on your income and withholding.
I hope this information is helpful!
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