deduct your combined allowable
expenses. You can file using the Married Filing Jointly filing status even if one of you had
no income or deductions.
Married taxpayers have a choice
to either file jointly or to file separately. The better choice always seems
to be to opt for Married Filing Jointly. The other options are the Married
Filing Separate and the Head of Household filing status. There a number of
worksheets and rules that you must follow to determine if you as a married
person can file a Head of Household. There are many credits and deductions
that you can qualify for by filing Married Filing Jointly or Head of
Household that you would not qualified or be allowed to be claimed when you
file as Married Filing Separately. One thing is for sure. If you have a
choice, choosing Married filing Jointly is much better than using Married
Filing Separately.
You must always determine your filing status before you
can determine your filing requirements, standard deduction and
thus your correct tax.
Your filing requirements are based on your filing
status. You can always file a tax return, but you are not always obligated
to do so. You want to file a tax return when you are due a refund for
example. For tax year 2014, you must file a tax return if you are single
(under age 65) and your income was at least $10,150. You must file a tax
return if you are Head of household (under age 65) and your income was at
least $13,050. You must file a tax return if you are married filing jointly
(at least one spouse was under age 65) and your income was at least
$21,500. Furthermore, once you determine if you are single, married filing
jointly or married filing separately, head of household, then you can look
up the amount that corresponds with your filing status. Based on all these,
again by looking in the correct tables or using the correct tax rates, you
can determine the correct tax to pay.
To qualify for head of
household you must be unmarried or be considered unmarried, you must have
paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for the year and have a
qualifying person who lived with you for more than half of the year unless
this person is your parent. Add up the amounts contributed and if your
amount is more than half the
amount others paid, you meet the requirement of paying more than
half the cost of keeping up the home to qualify for the head of
household status.
If you think you qualify for
the head of household filing status, fill out the worksheets and follow the
rules. It is worth your try because doing so will give you a lower tax rate
than those for single or married filing separately. This would also allow
you better credits and higher deductions too.
When you are married both you
and your spouse must include all of your income, exemptions, and deductions
on your tax return. In some cases, one spouse may be relieved of joint
liability for tax, interest, and penalties on a joint return. The spouse
seeking relief can seek three types of reliefs - Innocent spouse relief,
separation of liability relief, and equitable relief.
For equitable relief you must
request relief for any time that the Internal Revenue Service can collect
from you. For refunds, you must request them within the statute of
limitations regarding refunds. To qualify for innocent spouse relief, you
must have filed a joint return with an erroneous item that is solely your
spouse's responsibility and you must establish that had no reason to know
that tax was
