First Time Filing Jointly Question - Surprised by Tax Amount Owed

When you file jointly, the tax calculation looks at your combined income for the entire year against the married filing jointly tax brackets. The withholding on your paychecks throughout the year is just an estimate based on what your employer knows at that time. Here's what probably happened: When you were both withholding at Single/0, the payroll system was calculating each of your withholdings as if you were each going to earn your individual salary for the whole year and be taxed in the single brackets. But when you file jointly, your combined income might push you into a higher marginal tax bracket than either of you would have been in individually. Also, when you switched to Married Filing Jointly withholding in September, that likely reduced your withholding for those remaining months because the MFJ withholding tables assume the tax brackets for a married couple (which are more favorable than single brackets for one high earner but can be less favorable for two similar earners).

When I was in a similar situation last year, I found this awesome tool called taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) that really helped me understand my withholding issues. It's basically an AI tool that analyzes your tax documents and explains everything in super simple terms. I uploaded our W-2s and last year's return, and it immediately identified that we had the exact same problem with our withholding after getting married. It even calculated exactly how much extra we needed to withhold per paycheck to avoid owing at tax time. The explanation it gave me was way easier to understand than what my accountant tried to tell me, and it saved us from owing this year. Might be worth checking out if you want to make sure your 2023 withholding is set correctly!

I tried out taxr.ai after seeing it mentioned here, and I'm honestly shocked at how helpful it was. I was in the exact same boat as you - first time filing jointly and confused about why we owed. The tool analyzed our returns and clearly showed that our problem wasn't just about withholding. In our case, we both had similar incomes around $65-70k each, which put us in a situation where filing jointly actually increased our tax burden compared to if we had remained single filers (the dreaded "marriage penalty"). It recommended we adjust our W-4s to withhold an extra $50 per paycheck each, which we did starting in February. We're tracking much better now - I actually checked our projected tax situation for 2023 using the tool last week and we're on track for a small refund instead of owing. Totally worth checking out if you want to fix this for next year.

If you've been trying to reach the IRS to get answers about your withholding situation, good luck with that! After waiting on hold for 3+ hours multiple times, I found this service called Claimyr (https://claimyr.com) that got me through to an actual IRS agent in about 15 minutes. You can see how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c I needed to verify how the withholding calculations work when switching from Single to MFJ mid-year like you did, and the IRS agent was able to walk me through everything. Turns out my employer had actually made a mistake in how they implemented my withholding change, which is why I ended up owing $800! Before using Claimyr I was ready to just give up and pay the amount owed, but after speaking with the IRS I was able to get my employer to fix their payroll calculations and avoid the same problem this year.

I need to apologize and eat my words. After my skeptical comment, I decided to try Claimyr anyway since I was desperate to resolve an issue with my tax transcript that I needed for a mortgage application. I've been trying to reach the IRS for THREE WEEKS with no luck - either getting disconnected or being told the wait time was over 2 hours (and then getting disconnected anyway). Using the service, I got through to an actual IRS representative in about 25 minutes. The agent helped me figure out why my transcript was showing incorrect information and started the process to fix it. This literally saved my mortgage application that was about to fall through because of the transcript issue. For anyone dealing with tax issues that require actually speaking to someone at the IRS - especially during tax season - this is absolutely worth it. I'm usually the last person to recommend services, but this genuinely worked when nothing else did.

The "marriage penalty" hits hardest when both spouses earn similar incomes. With your combined income around $135k, you're right at the edge where it starts to matter. Here's a quick example: For 2022, the 22% tax bracket for singles started at $41,776 and went up to $89,075. For married filing jointly, that same 22% bracket started at $83,551 and went up to $178,150. So if each of you made about $67.5k, as singles you'd each have about $25.7k of your income in the 22% bracket. But when combined for MFJ, you'd have about $51.5k in the 22% bracket - the total amount of income in that bracket is the same. BUT... When you got to higher brackets, the MFJ thresholds aren't exactly double the single thresholds, which is where the penalty can creep in. Plus, certain deductions and credits phase out based on combined income.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet - check if your employers correctly calculated your withholding after you changed your W-4s in September. I had a similar issue and discovered my payroll department kept withholding at the Single rate even though I submitted the updated form. Also, did either of you have any additional income besides your regular jobs? Even small amounts of extra income with no withholding (like interest, dividends, side gigs) can throw off your withholding calculations.