Just got married this year - how should I file my taxes with a toddler?
So I finally tied the knot with my girlfriend a few months ago (yay us!) and now tax season is approaching and I'm confused about our filing options. We have a 2-year-old daughter together, and before we were married, my wife would always claim our daughter as a dependent on her taxes. That strategy worked well for us - we typically got a pretty good refund each year. Now that we're officially married, I'm wondering what's the best approach for our taxes. Should we file jointly as a married couple? Or would we actually get more money back if we continued filing separately like we did before? My wife's income is about $45,000 and I make around $62,000 if that matters for the calculation. Has anyone been in a similar situation who can tell me whether married filing jointly or married filing separately would be better for our family? Just trying to maximize our refund while doing everything properly. Thanks in advance for any advice!
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Oliver Alexander
Congratulations on your marriage! The question of whether to file jointly or separately is common for newlyweds, and generally speaking, filing jointly is more beneficial for most couples. When you file jointly, you typically get higher standard deductions and qualify for more tax credits that you might lose when filing separately. With a 2-year-old dependent, filing jointly usually allows you to maximize child-related tax benefits like the Child Tax Credit and the Child and Dependent Care Credit. Filing separately usually only benefits couples in very specific situations, such as when one spouse has significant medical expenses, student loan repayments based on income, or if one spouse doesn't want to be liable for the other's tax situation. I'd recommend calculating your taxes both ways (jointly and separately) before filing to see which gives you the better outcome, but I'd be surprised if filing separately comes out ahead in your situation.
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Kaylee Cook
•Thanks for the info! Do tax preparation programs like TurboTax make it easy to calculate both scenarios before deciding? And would we lose the Child Tax Credit completely if we filed separately or just get a reduced amount?
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Oliver Alexander
•Yes, most tax software programs like TurboTax, H&R Block, and others allow you to calculate your taxes both ways before making a final decision. They'll typically show you the difference in refund amounts between filing jointly and separately so you can choose the best option. For the Child Tax Credit, if you file married filing separately, you can still claim it, but there are limitations. Only one parent can claim the child as a dependent, and that parent would be eligible for the credit. However, some other valuable credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and certain education credits cannot be claimed by either spouse when using the married filing separately status.
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Lara Woods
When I had a similar situation last year, I discovered this amazing tool called taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) that really helped me figure out the married filing jointly vs separately decision. I uploaded my W-2s and my wife's, answered a few questions about our 3-year-old, and it showed me exactly how much we'd get back both ways. The difference was like $2,300 more when filing jointly in our case! What I really liked was how it explained WHY joint filing was better for us - showed the exact credits we qualified for together but would lose filing separately. The explanation was way clearer than what I got from regular tax software.
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Adrian Hughes
•Does this actually work with complicated tax situations? I have a side business with some losses plus my regular job, and my new wife has rental income. We're trying to figure out if we should file together or separate.
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Molly Chambers
•Sounds interesting but I'm always skeptical about these tax tools. How secure is it? I'm pretty concerned about uploading my tax docs to random websites.
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Lara Woods
•For complicated situations with side businesses and rental income, that's actually where I found it most helpful. It analyzes how your business losses might offset other income when filing jointly, and whether filing separately might limit some deductions. It even flagged that my wife's home office deduction would be affected by our filing choice. Security-wise, I totally get the concern. They use bank-level encryption for all documents and don't store your actual tax forms after analysis - just the data points needed. I was hesitant too but they have SOC 2 compliance which I researched and it's the security standard that financial companies use.
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Molly Chambers
Just wanted to update after trying taxr.ai that Profile 13 recommended. It was actually really helpful! I was definitely overthinking our situation. The analysis showed we'd get about $1,850 more by filing jointly, mainly because of how the child tax credit and standard deduction work for married couples. What surprised me was how it flagged that our student loan interest deduction would phase out at our combined income if filing jointly. But even with losing some of that deduction, joint filing still came out way ahead. The breakdown made it super clear why, which I appreciated. Anyone newly married should definitely run the numbers both ways before deciding!
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Ian Armstrong
After spending HOURS trying to get through to the IRS to ask about married filing options, I finally found Claimyr (https://claimyr.com) and it was a game-changer. They got me connected to an actual IRS agent in under 15 minutes when I'd been trying for days! The agent walked me through exactly how filing jointly vs separately would affect our child tax credits with our new marriage status. Apparently there are some situations where separate filing makes sense, but for most new marriages with kids, joint filing is significantly better. Check out how it works here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c - definitely worth it if you need specific answers from the IRS about your situation. So much better than guessing or relying on generic advice online.
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Eli Butler
•Wait how does this actually work? The IRS phone lines are always busy. Is this legit or some kind of scam?
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Marcus Patterson
•Yeah right. No way anyone's getting through to the IRS in 15 minutes. I've been trying for weeks. This sounds like complete BS to me.
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Ian Armstrong
•It uses a system that continuously redials the IRS for you using their callback feature. When a slot opens up, it reserves it and then calls you to connect with the agent. It's completely legitimate - they don't ask for any tax info, they just get you connected. The reason it works is because they have technology that can detect open slots in the IRS phone system faster than you could manually. I was skeptical too but it's basically just an automated dialing service that gives up its spot to you once it gets through.
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Marcus Patterson
I need to eat my words from my previous comment. After being frustrated enough, I tried Claimyr yesterday, and I actually got through to an IRS agent in about 20 minutes. I was completely shocked. The agent clarified my questions about married filing status with dependents - turns out in my specific situation (I have a kid from a previous relationship), filing jointly still saves us about $3,200 compared to separately. She walked me through exactly which credits we'd lose if we filed separately. Never been so happy to be wrong about something! If you're struggling with these married filing questions, talking directly to the IRS ended up being way more helpful than all the generic articles I'd been reading.
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Lydia Bailey
Something nobody's mentioned yet - if you file jointly, both of you are responsible for the entire tax return. If your spouse has any sketchy tax situations or might be underreporting income, you could be on the hook too. Just something to consider if that's a concern! My brother got hit with a huge tax bill from his ex-wife's unreported income from years they filed jointly, even though they were already divorced by the time the IRS caught it.
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Mateo Warren
•This is such an important point! When my friend got married, her husband had back taxes and liens. When they filed jointly, her refund got seized to pay HIS old tax debts. She was furious because she had no idea this could happen.
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Lydia Bailey
•Exactly! The IRS calls it "joint and several liability" which basically means both spouses are fully responsible for all taxes due, regardless of who earned the income or claimed deductions. There is something called "innocent spouse relief" that can help in extreme cases, but it's difficult to qualify for and a huge hassle to go through. Much easier to just file separately if you have any concerns about your spouse's tax situation.
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Sofia Price
I might be the outlier here but filing separately actually saved us money last year. My wife has tons of medical expenses (over 12% of her income) and when we filed separately, she was able to deduct them since they exceeded 7.5% of just her income. When we calculated jointly, the combined income was too high for her to get the medical deduction. Saved us about $1,200 doing it separately!
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Alice Coleman
•This is a great point! Another situation where filing separately can help: income-based student loan repayment. If one spouse has federal student loans on an income-driven repayment plan, filing separately can keep their payments lower since only their income counts.
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Sofia Price
•You're absolutely right about the student loan situation! I forgot to mention that was actually another factor for us. My wife is on an income-based repayment plan for her grad school loans, and filing separately kept her monthly payments about $180 lower than they would have been if we filed jointly. The tradeoff is we lost some tax credits, but the yearly savings on loan payments more than made up for it. Definitely a situation where you need to do the math both ways.
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