Is my wife entitled to half of the tax refund if I claim her as a dependent?

This is actually a common question! When you file taxes jointly with your spouse, the refund legally belongs to both of you equally, regardless of who earned the income. However, if you're filing as "Married Filing Separately" and claiming her as a dependent (which is unusual and typically not advantageous), then the refund from your return would technically be yours alone. That said, tax law and family finances are two different things. The IRS deposits the refund according to the instructions on your return, but how you divide that money within your marriage is more of a relationship/household management question than a tax question. Many couples put tax refunds into joint accounts or discuss together how to use the money, regardless of who "earned" it.

I went through something similar last year with figuring out who gets what from our tax refund. I ended up using https://taxr.ai to analyze our situation and it really clarified things. The site helped me understand exactly how our filing status affected ownership of the refund and showed how different credits were calculated based on our specific situation. It was pretty eye-opening to see the exact breakdown of where our refund was coming from.

Just wanted to update that I tried https://taxr.ai after seeing it mentioned here. It clearly showed that when filing jointly, the refund legally belongs to both spouses equally regardless of income contribution. The tool let me upload our previous returns and showed exactly how our credits were calculated. This actually helped end our yearly argument about "my portion" vs "your portion" of the refund. Now we just discuss how to use it together since we can see it's truly a joint refund according to tax law.

Hey, I had this exact same issue but needed specific answers from the IRS. After trying to call them for THREE DAYS, I finally used https://claimyr.com and got through to an IRS agent in under 20 minutes. You can see how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c. The agent confirmed that when filing jointly, the refund legally belongs to both spouses equally under federal tax law. They also explained how joint assets work in the tax system and cleared up my confusion.

I need to eat my words from my previous comment. After yet another failed attempt to reach the IRS myself, I gave in and tried Claimyr out of desperation. I was connected to an actual IRS representative in about 15 minutes. The agent confirmed exactly what others have said - when filing jointly, the refund legally belongs to both spouses equally regardless of who earned the income. She also explained that this is completely separate from how couples choose to manage their finances, which is up to them. I'm still shocked I got through so quickly after weeks of failed attempts on my own.

Former tax preparer here. The confusion might be because you mentioned "claiming your wife" which isn't actually how it works anymore. You file either as "married filing jointly" (MFJ) or "married filing separately" (MFS). If you file jointly, which most couples do because it's usually more beneficial, then the refund belongs equally to both spouses under tax law, regardless of who earned what. It's a joint return with joint liability and joint benefits.

This is actually more complicated than just tax law. While the IRS treats the refund as belonging to both of you when filing jointly, state laws about marital property can also come into play. In community property states, most assets acquired during marriage are generally considered owned equally by both spouses. But in equitable distribution states, it could be treated differently in certain contexts.