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pantsheadWhat follows will probably NOT be interesting to you unless you were part of a recent discussion about newlyweds and whether they should file jointly or separately. But if that interests you, click away!
We filed our taxes jointly this year, as we have done ever since we got married. Here are some salient pieces of information--they may not apply to your situation, of course, but use them as you see fit:
We owed 5.9% of our gross income in tax. (Since we'd over-paid, we should be getting a nice refund as long as the IRS thinks I did everything correctly. Good thing we didn't overpay NYS by very much, because they're talking about delaying repayment for several months. Stupid state budget crisis!)
If we had filed separately, the tax on my income would have been 5.7% of the gross. The tax on PoC's income would have been 6.65% of his gross, largely because of self-employment. (If he had earned the same amount of money but none of it had been self-employment, the tax would have been 4.1% of his gross.)
By filing jointly, we saved a whopping $88! However, this would have been a few hundred $ if (as above) none of PoC's income had been self-employment.
Some notes:
Two important new schedules this year increased our refund: Schedule L allowed us to deduct (WITHOUT itemizing) a portion of the real estate taxes we pay. Schedule M allowed us to claim our "Making Work Pay" credit that has resulted in lower tax withholding for most of the year--but you still have to file the form to get the money back! For the purposes of the above numbers, I divided the Schedule L deduction in half, but I'm not sure whether you can actually do that.
About itemizing deductions: We don't pay enough in mortgage interest to itemize our deductions, and PoC didn't have any work-related expenses to deduct. However, I was interested to notice that if one person in a Married-Filing-Separately arrangement itemizes their deductions, the other person gets NO standard deduction! I can only assume that the Schedule A takes this into account.
Wow, is Self-Employment expensive! I think this was a good introduction to it for us: Although it made up only 19% of PoC's income, it accounts for 40.7% of his tax! If he does more work like this, we'll take it into account. (He had already taken it into account when he bid on the job, but now we see it's really true.)
Happy filing!
We filed our taxes jointly this year, as we have done ever since we got married. Here are some salient pieces of information--they may not apply to your situation, of course, but use them as you see fit:
We owed 5.9% of our gross income in tax. (Since we'd over-paid, we should be getting a nice refund as long as the IRS thinks I did everything correctly. Good thing we didn't overpay NYS by very much, because they're talking about delaying repayment for several months. Stupid state budget crisis!)
If we had filed separately, the tax on my income would have been 5.7% of the gross. The tax on PoC's income would have been 6.65% of his gross, largely because of self-employment. (If he had earned the same amount of money but none of it had been self-employment, the tax would have been 4.1% of his gross.)
By filing jointly, we saved a whopping $88! However, this would have been a few hundred $ if (as above) none of PoC's income had been self-employment.
Some notes:
Two important new schedules this year increased our refund: Schedule L allowed us to deduct (WITHOUT itemizing) a portion of the real estate taxes we pay. Schedule M allowed us to claim our "Making Work Pay" credit that has resulted in lower tax withholding for most of the year--but you still have to file the form to get the money back! For the purposes of the above numbers, I divided the Schedule L deduction in half, but I'm not sure whether you can actually do that.
About itemizing deductions: We don't pay enough in mortgage interest to itemize our deductions, and PoC didn't have any work-related expenses to deduct. However, I was interested to notice that if one person in a Married-Filing-Separately arrangement itemizes their deductions, the other person gets NO standard deduction! I can only assume that the Schedule A takes this into account.
Wow, is Self-Employment expensive! I think this was a good introduction to it for us: Although it made up only 19% of PoC's income, it accounts for 40.7% of his tax! If he does more work like this, we'll take it into account. (He had already taken it into account when he bid on the job, but now we see it's really true.)
Happy filing!
