Question about W-4 and filing jointly with nonresident spouse.

[ZaiKajou]

  Just wondering if I should change my W-4 to married filing jointly, but that seems to take 0$ out over the year. Going to be filing my 2023 taxes jointly with my Canadian spouse, getting him an ITIN number and everything this year to file them jointly.

So, would it be wise to update my W-4 to jointly now or is there a better way to go about it? Tax calculators don't really take that into consideration since I won't know what we may owe if anything etc., until after we do our taxes for the year since anything he would be taxed wouldn't be known until tax time if I read everything correctly.

[JosephS1]

You should attempt to fill out your W-4 with your current status.  There is a location towards the bottom of the W-4 to have extra withholding if you believe it necessary.  There are various tools you can use to estimate how much you should have withheld under various situations.  I have listed at the bottom both the TurboTax withholding tax estimator and the IRS withholding tax estimator.

Filling out the details in the estimator should normally not take more than 30 minutes provided you have the details needed as to estimated income, etc.

TurboTax W-4 estimator

IRS withholding tax estimator

Form W-4

@ZaiKajou 

[ZaiKajou]

 Thanks very much for the reply.

I was looking at the W-4 calculators, but since my spouse is a nonresident that's going to be treated as a resident for tax purposes, they won't have a W-4 since their income is only from Canada, but is going to be taxable in the U.S., so I'm not sure it would be very accurate for changing from MFS to MFJ on the W-4.

And they make much less than me since they are a student and not working full time (and when converting income from CAD to USD makes a difference as well), so we'd still be under the standard deduction for MFJ.

Filing jointly so that our combined income helps me to get health insurance for myself through the marketplace, as we were told as long as we file jointly that we could count joint income towards the requirement.

Though I supposed I could probably go through my pay stubs and change it to MFJ and have them withhold close to the same amount as MFS that's showing on my current year's stubs.

[PattiF]

If you do plan on changing your filing as  MFJ in the next year to help obtain health insurance for yourself through the marketplace, you should use the W-4 calculator to see the amount suggested for that filing status. 

The amount of withholding will be shown in Box 2 of your W-2. You don't need to add up your paystubs to find that figure.  Comparing that amount with the calculated number from the W-4 with filing status of MFJ should let you know if you should file a new form.