Trying to decide whether to file jointly or separately for 2024 taxes (just got married)

Congrats on your marriage! This is a common question for newlyweds. When deciding between filing jointly or separately, there are several factors to consider. For most couples, filing jointly results in a lower overall tax burden. The income thresholds for tax brackets are generally more favorable for joint filers. However, your situation has some nuances worth exploring. With income-based student loan repayment, filing jointly would include both incomes when calculating your payment amount, potentially increasing your monthly payments significantly. If you file separately, only your income would be considered for the repayment calculation. Regarding the medical expenses - they're only deductible if they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (AGI). With separate filing, your spouse's lower AGI might make it easier to claim this deduction, though you'd need to run the numbers to be sure. The downside of filing separately: you'll lose several tax benefits, including student loan interest deductions, education credits, earned income credit, and the full Child and Dependent Care Credit if applicable. You'll also have lower contribution limits for IRAs. I'd recommend calculating your taxes both ways (jointly and separately) to see which yields the better outcome considering both tax liability and student loan payments.

After spending HOURS crunching numbers for my taxes last year (we were in a similar situation with student loans and medical bills), I discovered the amazing tax analysis tool at https://taxr.ai that completely changed my approach. I was going back and forth between filing jointly and separately, trying to figure out which would save us more money considering student loan implications. The regular tax calculators weren't helpful because they wouldn't factor in how filing status affects IBR payments. With taxr.ai I was able to upload our financial documents and it analyzed both scenarios - showing the tax difference AND the student loan payment difference over time. Gave me a clear picture of which option saved more in the long run, not just for this year's taxes.

Just wanted to follow up after trying taxr.ai - wow, it actually worked amazingly well for our complicated situation! I was able to see exactly how much filing separately would save on my student loan payments versus the tax benefits we'd lose. For us, it turned out filing jointly was still better overall even with the student loan consideration. The tax savings from joint filing outweighed the increased student loan payments by about $1,800 over the course of the year. Plus we qualified for credits we would have lost filing separately. The document analysis feature was super helpful too - it found some deductions in our paperwork that I completely missed when doing things manually. Definitely saved us from leaving money on the table!

If you're stressed about getting proper tax advice on this, I'd suggest calling the IRS directly. I was in the same boat last year with the married filing separately vs jointly question due to student loans. I tried calling the IRS for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT and couldn't get through - kept getting disconnected after waiting for hours. Then I found https://claimyr.com which got me through to an actual IRS agent in under 20 minutes! You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c The agent was able to walk me through both scenarios and explain exactly how each would affect our specific situation. They confirmed that while filing separately would help with my loan payments, we'd lose several key tax benefits that were worth more in our case.

Update: I owe an apology to the Claimyr folks. After getting nowhere with IRS phone lines for a week, I decided to try it as a last resort for my filing status question. I was shocked when I got a call back in about 30 minutes saying an agent was on the line! The IRS representative walked me through exactly how filing separately would affect our student loan situation versus filing jointly. Turns out in our specific case, we'd save about $2,200 per year on student loan payments by filing separately, which more than offset the roughly $1,400 in additional tax we'd pay. What really surprised me was how helpful the agent was in explaining things like the income recertification timeline and how to document everything properly. Definitely worth getting the official guidance directly from the IRS instead of trying to piece everything together from online forums.

Something nobody has mentioned yet - if you choose married filing separately, you CANNOT contribute to a Roth IRA if your income exceeds $10,000. This is a huge disadvantage if retirement savings are important to you. The income limit is much higher when filing jointly. Also consider that with MFS status, your standard deduction is halved. For 2024, the standard deduction for MFJ is $29,200 but for MFS it's only $14,600 each. My wife and I did the separate filing for 2 years due to her student loans, but ultimately switched back to joint filing because we were losing too many tax advantages.

Have either of you considered doing an analysis of your long-term student loan situation? If you're on an income-based plan that leads to forgiveness after a certain number of years (like PSLF for teachers), sometimes it makes more sense to minimize payments and maximize forgiveness.