My fiance and I just had a baby. We have always planned on getting married. Recently we found out that my fiance will be starting a new job next year making good money. We were wondering if it would be advantageous to get married before year end to take advantage of her low income, my high income, and our new baby? I make about 65k she made 14k and we live with our parents. =============>>>>>>>.. basically,it makes sense to consider the tax implications of your marriagehowever, I doubt it would have a very large impact on your taxes to get married before the end of the year unless you are I high bracket at least 25%;aslongas she has little to no income , I guess moving to the married tax brackets would probably result in a ,perhaps,big refund.
I'm thinking that filing married jointly could be enough to bring us down to the 15% take bracket instead of the 25% I am in currently. I also think to achieve the lower bracket we would have to contribute to an IRA.=>>>>> When filing your tax return as mfj ,the concept of marriage penalty takes effect when the taxes you pay jointly exceed what you would have paid if each of you had remained single and filed as single filers.The marriage penalty is the opposite of the marriage bonus. In a marriage bonus situation, you pay less in taxes as a result of your married status. The marriage bonus is most likely seen in a situation where one spouse earns significantly less than the other. For example, situations in which one spouse stays at home or has a part-time job rather than a full-time job are most likely to result in a marriage bonus. For those with low incomes, the marriage penalty doesn’t usually apply. Things change in the 25 percent tax bracket though. For a single filer, this bracket ends at an income of $89,350 for 2014. If you simply doubled that number to get the top amount for joint filers, you’d see $178,700. But, unfortunately, that’s not how it works. For 2014, the 25 percent tax bracket ends at $148,850 for mfj filers. Thus, they find themselves penalized for their combined income.so in your case aslongas you expect your combined income to increase next year, then you might aswell file your return as mfj on 2014 return ;the marriage bonus is most likely seen in a situation where one spouse earns significantly less than the other.. |