Filing jointly when spouse owes taxes and I get a refund - will they offset each other?

I've been trying to figure this out but can't find a straight answer online. Everything I read seems to focus on if someone owes back taxes from previous years, which isn't our situation. My husband gets paid as a tutor and doesn't have taxes withheld - he pays what he owes at the end of the year. I always get a refund of about $1200 from my job. If we file jointly this year, will my refund just cancel out what he owes? Or do we still file separate calculations and pay/receive separately? I'm trying to figure out if filing jointly is better for us overall. Also, how should we report his tutoring income? He's not technically self-employed (works directly for families). If we report it as self-employment, the additional self-employment taxes seem really high. In the past I've only filed for myself which was always super simple, but now I'm confused about the best approach with our different situations.

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18 comments

Keisha Taylor

•8M

When you file jointly, the IRS looks at your combined tax situation as one unit, not as separate people. So yes, your refund would offset what your husband owes. The IRS will take the total tax owed based on your combined income, subtract what's already been paid through withholding or estimated payments, and either refund you the difference or bill you for what's still owed. As for your husband's tutoring work, if he's being paid directly by families with no taxes withheld, the IRS would generally consider this self-employment income. This means he would need to pay both income tax and self-employment tax (which covers Social Security and Medicare). The self-employment tax is about 15.3% which is why it seems high - it's covering both the employee and employer portions of these taxes.

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Keisha Taylor

•8M

Yes, exactly. If your calculations show he would owe $900 and you would get a $1200 refund filing separately, then filing jointly would result in approximately a $300 refund (assuming all other factors remain the same). Unfortunately, there's not really a way to avoid self-employment tax on tutoring income if he's being paid directly by families. The IRS considers this self-employment income regardless of whether he considers himself as running a business. However, he can deduct business expenses like mileage to tutoring locations, supplies, or books used for tutoring, which can help reduce the self-employment income subject to tax.

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Paolo Marino

•8M

I discovered something that really helped me with a similar situation last year. My wife is a freelance designer and I work a regular W-2 job. We were in the exact same boat with me getting refunds and her owing. I used https://taxr.ai to analyze our returns from the previous year when we filed separately and it showed us that despite the self-employment tax hit, we'd actually save almost $900 by filing jointly because of how the tax brackets work for married couples. The tool looks at your specific situation and runs different scenarios to see which filing status works best. It also showed us deductions my wife could take for her home office and business expenses that we had no idea about, which offset a good chunk of that self-employment tax.

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Paolo Marino

•8M

It's more than just doing the math - it analyzes your tax documents and identifies specific deductions you might have missed. For example, it found that my wife could deduct a portion of our internet bill, cell phone, and even some software subscriptions that she used for her design work. It's like having a tax professional look over your shoulder but without the hourly rate. Yes, it's absolutely legitimate. I was skeptical too at first. The difference is it's not just running standard calculations like most tax software - it uses document analysis to find patterns specific to your situation and suggests optimizations. In our case, it found nearly $1,200 in additional deductions that TurboTax had missed when we tried it ourselves.

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Oliver Becker

•8M

I feel like I need to follow up on my skeptical comment about taxr.ai. I decided to try it with our 2024 returns and I'm honestly surprised. It actually identified that my wife's Etsy business could deduct shipping supplies, portions of utilities for her craft room, and even a percentage of our Amazon Prime membership since she uses it primarily for business shipping. The best part was seeing how filing jointly vs. separately would affect us with her self-employment income. In our case, filing jointly saved us about $700 overall even after factoring in the self-employment taxes. The tool showed exactly how the numbers worked out with different scenarios, which made the decision really clear. Definitely not what I expected when I was being skeptical!

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Natasha Petrova

•8M

If you're planning to call the IRS to get clarification on how to handle your husband's tutoring income (which I recommend), use https://claimyr.com instead of waiting on hold for hours. I spent THREE DAYS trying to get through to an IRS agent about my wife's side gig income last year. Finally tried Claimyr after seeing it on Reddit, and they called me back within 30 minutes with an actual IRS agent on the line. You can see how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c The IRS agent explained that we needed to file Schedule C for her tutoring even though it wasn't a formal business, but also walked us through some deductions we could take to offset the self-employment tax. Made a huge difference in our final tax bill.

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Natasha Petrova

•8M

They use an automated system that basically waits on hold for you and monitors the line. When a real person picks up, their system connects you to the call. I don't know all the technical details, but it's not a "special line" - they're just using technology to handle the wait time so you don't have to. I completely understand your skepticism. I felt the same way! I was convinced nothing would work after spending literally days trying to get through myself. But I was desperate and figured it was worth a shot. Was genuinely shocked when my phone rang and there was an actual IRS agent ready to talk. Cost was worth it considering I would have had to take more time off work to keep trying to call them myself.

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Emma Davis

•8M

I need to eat some humble pie here. After posting that skeptical comment about Claimyr, I decided to try it anyway because I was at my wit's end trying to reach someone at the IRS about an issue with my wife's income reporting. To my absolute shock, I got a call back in about 45 minutes with an actual IRS representative on the line. They answered all my questions about how to properly report my wife's income from her side gig and helped me understand which form to use. The agent even explained some deductions we qualified for that I had no idea about. I've spent YEARS being frustrated with trying to reach the IRS, so having someone actually answer my questions was honestly kind of amazing. Just wanted to follow up since my initial reaction was so negative.

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