Married... should I file jointly or separately?

This answer is really based on several key questions.

Did either of you or your children pay tuition for post high school education this past year?

If this is the case and you qualify for any of the education credits you must file joint to get those credits.

Did you both work? and if you both did what were your individual and combined incomes?

Do either of you have young children?

In this case if you both worked and both had substantail incomes you may get better refunds by filing Married Seperate.

If your incomes combined are less than $34k and you have children under 17 you have to file joint to get the Earned Income Credit.

As you can see there are many variables here making a simple one case fits all answer impossible.

My advise is to check it our both ways an go with what works best for your situation.

The vast majority of married couples will benefit from filing Married Filing Jointly. Taxes are usually MUCH higher when filing Married Filing Separately.

Unless one of you has both low income and high medical expenses or high personal casualty losses OR if you're in a Community Property state and one of you has fairly high income and the other has little or none, you won't get any benefit from filing separate returns.

Filing separate returns also disqualifies you from a number of other tax breaks and credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit, various tuition deductions, etc.

If you're an "ordinary" wage-earner couple you will virtually always make out better with a joint return. Even if only one of you had income you can still file jointly.

A married couple will pay a lower total tax amount if they file a joint return. If a couple chooses to file separately, both returns must show both spouses' names and social security numbers.

If a married couple files separately and one spouse itemizes deductions, the other spouse must either:

Also itemize deductions, or

Claim "0" (zero) as the standard deduction

In other words, a taxpayer whose spouse itemizes deductions cannot take the standard deduction.

Also if you have a child and file a "Married Filing Separate Return", you cannot take the "Earned Income Credit (EIC)" tax credit.

In general the tax breaks try to make it so it doesn't matter any more. I'd file jointly to save the hassle of having to do taxes twice.

I believe you must file jointly

Neither is a big bonus. The IRS looks at it as one either way. But if your income takes a significant jump because of getting married you may get audited, I did.