My wife is adamant that we shouldn't file married jointly saying her student loan payments will be much higher if we do it. I've just always heard its stupid to not file jointly.
Is there ever a time to NOT file married jointly for taxes?
byu/workredditaccount77 inpersonalfinance
Posted by workredditaccount77
43 Comments
I didn’t file joinly last year for the same reason. I did file jointly this year and my payment is much higher. You should listen to your wife on this one (low key even if you’re right).
The problem is the both of you are working on assumptions and emotions rather than making decisions based on actual factual data.
Wife is correct that student loan payments can be affected by income. Therefore, MFS may be preferred.
However, MFS might increase tax owed. So the loan benefit may be offset by this and make MFJ better.
The both of you need to do more research into the *actual* impact to the student loans and mock out MFS/MFJ tax returns. Then compare which route is better.
>student loan payments
This is pretty much the one common time to not file jointly.
That said, unless you’re in a forgiveness program, you’re just kicking the can down the road.
Is paying down her student loans a priority for your family?
Actually the student loan/income based repayment thing is one of the few situations where it MIGHT make sense to file MFS. You would have to sit down and do the math on whether or not it would indeed make sense.
If she has an income-based repayment plan, yes, it would increase that payment if filing jointly. That being said… get off that plan and pay those suckers down unless you have a crazy low interest rate.
If your wife is on a plan like SAVE, IBR, or PAYE, filing separately allows her to base payments on only her income. There are calculators online that can help with this, like this one is for SAVE https://www.tateesq.com/calculator/save-plan
What are both of your top tax rates vs jointly’s top tax rate? That would be the bigger issue, plus you potentially miss out on some credits.
Try using FreeTaxUSA with you both jointly and then both of you independently. If there is no differences then maybe individually is better for her loans, but I’d guess it doesn’t matter. If there is huge tax savings by filing jointly you need to compare that to the impact it would have on her student loans.
As others have said, yes it may increase the payments, but you should WANT to pay as much as possible to get out of debt ASAP anyway.
Either do the research, or pay someone to do it for you. There’s a really easy way to figure out who is right, do the math both ways and the file for the one that gives you the most money.
The short answer is “yes, there is *a time*”, but a better answer is “rarely”. As with most things with tax, the answer almost always comes down to “it depends”, and that’s based on your personal set of circumstances. The typical MFS (Married Filing Separately) taxpayer will be one of a small handful of circumstances: one spouse is extremely high earning and the other spouse earns modestly (i.e., a surgeon and a schoolteacher), or one spouse files innocent spouse relief. There are a handful of other situations where a married couple might be better off choosing to file their federal tax return separately, but those situations are typically even more rare.
My wife and I filed separately while we had student loans, our payments were MUCH less. You’ll have to do the calculations for yourself to see if that is true in your situation or not.
Income driven student loans are probably the most common reason to file married filing separately. Your wife is almost certainly correct. If you both earn income, then both your incomes would be considered to set her monthly loan payments.
As others have said, do the side by side comparison of tax savings from MFJ vs loan payment savings of MFS. I filed MFS when I had loans, because my wife is a very high earner and my payment was going to skyrocket lol
Damn…just not that hard. Punch the numbers in TurboTax or your favorite tax software and change the filing status. Or…just pay a tax guy but I bet they are slammed right now.
Id honestly just try it both ways. Whichever way benefits you both the most you submit.
We did this for our 2025 returns for student loans. We’re both high earners and filing jointly would have resulted in a monthly student loan payment of over 2k. Filing separately reduced that to less than 800 per month. She’s in a loan forgiveness program and it’s literally the only thing that made it worth filing separately. Goal is to pay as little as possible.
What did your accountant or tax preparer say?
Student loans is the main reason. My payment would be obscenely higher if we filed jointly
Yes, do it both ways in your tax program and see which comes out better. There is no logic or intuitiveness to taxes you just gotta plug in the numbers
We file separately for the exact reason your wife is saying too. We make roughly the same, so it comes out to about the same amount in taxes either way and her student loans are only based off her income and not off our combined income. It saves us a ton.
Yes, usually when there is a significant difference in income between married partners. For example, there are scenarios where one partner is eligible for a tax break for student loan interest and the other isn’t and the only way you can get the credit is to file separately because you won’t get it filing jointly.
If you had a good tax accountant they run both ways when doing your taxes and give you the better outcome of it.
Otherwise it would probably be for legal purposes if you wanted some sort of income or deductions not to do with both of you.
I use turbo tax and each year enter the data three ways – married and married filing separately for each of us. A few time separately was better but not that often.
This year my income is very low due to retirement (both) but wife’s is higher. I thought separate would be better especially when I was due a tiny refund but then my wife’s taxes would have been 1/2 higher than the joint return!
It’s still worth it to test it each year.
It’s a bit late since it’s right in the middle of tax season but I would share all of your numbers with a good CA and get their thoughts. ChatGPT can also do a alright job of an initially summary of pros and cons.
I think for those with health insurance through ACA you have to file jointly as well.
Go run the scenarios with ChatGPT. Share your income, loan amount, interest rate, and what type of payment plan your spouse is on.
Why don’t you go to a CPA and get factual information than going off “what I heard”
My accounting professor said that Married Filing Separately was for mob wives.
Not the OP
Would it make sense to file separately if one spouse only has a W-2 income, and the other one is self employed, and has a huge list of 1099s, and expenses.
As someone who does married filed separately due to my wifes student loans to reduce her student loan payments you need to be strategic and have open dialogues with your SO
The partner who files separately who is not doing so to minimize student loan payments gets screwed from a tax standpoint. Make sure you communicate how much you owe and split the tax return or tax burden. Dont let resentment build.
Years ago, under some fairly unique tax situations that no longer exist, my wife and I filed separately when we were very young. I (M now 61) was making more than twice what she made because she was working part-time while also a part-time SAHM. We were able to itemize our deductions, so we put the kids and all the itemized deductions (state and local taxes, property taxes, mortgage interest) on my return to bring me into a lower bracket. Being part-time, she was already in a low bracket and we couldn’t get her any lower.
Have filed jointly for the last 25-30 years.
The only reason we did not file jointly was to make student loan payments affordable, your wife is correct in saying that, but you need to do the math on whether or not it works for your finances
On that note I am nervous that my 9yo son will lose Medicaid if I clam him. I made 69k last year and am cautious because we’re already living check to check right now and can’t afford the extra expense of paying for insurance
I’m going to take a different approach and throw some questions back at you.
Why are you trying to make as small of student loan payments as possible? Don’t you want to get this paid off and out of your life?
Unless the interest rate is really low (I’m personally thinking like 4% or less; preferences vary), you’ll probably get a lot of psychological benefit and some financial benefit from getting those loans paid off as fast as possible.
So why not do MFJ, take the higher payments to get your loans paid off as fast as possible, and use the tax savings to pay extra on your loans to boot?
To be frank you need to prepare 3 reports to see what’s going on.
1 MFJ, 1MFS + 1 HOH.
Have you gone into any of the free tax filing software and run each of these scenarios for yourself? The best way to understand the impact is to use your real information and look at it.
The student loan issue, yes, and also because one spouse is not responsible enough in other financial endeavors that may put the other spouse in offset trouble.
If you have an income driven repayment plan for student loans then yeah absolutely
I mean, that’s, exactly, THE classic exception: when someone’s student loan payments are based on their income, and the increased loan payment would be more than the tax saving from filing joint. You have to dry-run it both ways to know.
Either crunch numbers or get a tax guy and ask him to crunch the numbers
You have to do a cost analysis of how your income would impact the student loan payments versus without your income and then analyze how much you would owe filing separately versus together.
Let’s say this is what you find:
Loan payments MFS: $200/mo or $2.4/yr
Loan payments jointly: $500/mo or $6k/yr
Taxes MFS (total for both of you): $2k
Taxes jointly (total for both of you): the govt owes you $2k.
So in this situation, MFS ends up costing $4.4k while jointly costs you $4k. The difference can be opposite, you can end up paying more for jointly filing so you need to figure these things out. She probably is staring at a high loan payment if she files jointly and if you file jointly, you’re agreeing your finances are joined, so you should probably consider how you’re going to help with that since your income negatively impacts her while her income might positively impact yours.
We file MFS. Partner is on an income based student loan repayment that would double if we filed Jointly. We take a hit on our taxes so that we don’t take a significantly larger monthly hit on student loan payments.
When you are renters. My cpa had me do that all the time.
Literally just did this myself with the loan calculator for income driven repayment options. I am getting married and wanted to know most affordable payment. Filing jointly, payment is around $1500. Filing separately, payment is around $700. Income doubles, so payment doubles. (Here’s to hoping my PSLF happens.)
I was hoping the extra deductions or other tax benefits might offset it but not likely at an extra $600-800 month. Even with dependents, not worth it.