Tax filing when married with student loans

[rmcknigh]

My spouse is making $80k per year. She has $155k in student loans and is paying these back with a PAYE income based plan. This entails a payment of 10% of the discretionary income or the equivalent of a 10 year standard loan payment, whichever is lower. She is also in the public service forgiveness program, so limiting the payments is a priority. I do not have student loans, and my salary is $300k. We have been filing separately to limit our income for the monthly loan payments. My question is whether the benefits of filing jointly would offset the cost of using our higher, joint income for the loan repayments? I know that separately the deductions have to be shared. Not sure if there are any additional things to consider. We own a home with ~$850k left in principle. We don’t have car payments or any other debts. We don’t have any other income. We don’t have dependents. Thanks for your help. 

[ThomasM125]

The best way to determine that would be to prepare your tax return jointly and see what the tax is versus filing separately. You can create a new TurboTax account online and prepare the return and not submit it so there would not be a cost involved. It seems like your return is fairly simple so it shouldn't be difficult to do.