Married Filing Separately Dependent

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 20, 2019
2 replies
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I am working on mine and my wife's taxes for 2019 and we are choosing married filing separately this year in order to keep student loan payments under the PAYE program as low as possible. Our financial adviser laid out this plan which took in to account the fact that out tax burden will be larger when filing separately. We are married, living together, and have a child who was born in 2018. We are not separated or divorced. TurboTax will not let either of us claim our child as a dependent based on our answers to the questions it has asked. Most of the questions seem to apply to people who are separated. For example it asks if our child spend most nights with me, my wife, or 50/50. The answer is none of the above, we all live together. How do i get turbo tax to let one of us claim our child as a dependent?

Filing Status

HollyP

Employee Tax Expert

Under the new Tax Reform laws, you no longer receive an exemption for your dependents, however, there are other tax benefits you may be able to qualify for when listing your child on your tax return, such as the Child Tax Credit or the Dependent Care Credit. However, these credits are either disallowed or greatly reduced for parents who use Married Filing Separately as their filing status. Please see this article for more info: Is it better for a married couple to file jointly or ...

As for entering this into TurboTax to see if you are qualified for the credits, you will need to report that the child lived with the spouse who is reporting that child on their tax return for the whole year. Usually, the spouse with the higher income would benefit from claiming the child. You can also say that the child spent equal nights with both parents.

You can read our article titled: Should You and Your Spouse File Taxes Jointly or Separately? for more info.

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NCperson

Level 15

also, you can't take advantage of the up to $2500 interest deduction if you are filing married - separately. neither of you are able to deduct the interest