A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about whether or not a married couple can choose to file a separate return where one spouse claims the other spouse as a dependent. The answer is yes, if the spouse being claimed as a dependent: Has no gross income, and Isn’t filing a tax return, […]
This question comes up now and then: My spouse is disabled and has no income; can we file as married filing separately and I claim him/her as a dependent on my tax return?
Head of household filing status was created in 1951.
in 1948, Congress created filing statuses. The original filing statuses in 1948 were: Single; Married Filing Jointly; and Married Filing Separately.
After Poe v. Seaborn, proposals to equalize the tax treatment of married couples were floated in 1933, 1934, 1937 and 1941, but none of the proposals were adopted.
Now let’s look at what the IRS and the courts had to say about the issue of filing separate tax returns and community property law in the 1920s.
Community property laws factored heavily into the creation of filing statuses in the U.S. Tax Code.
Back in 2014 and into 2015, I posted a multi-part series of posts about the history of marriage in the tax code. In 2016 I was asked to condense that series into a CPE presentation. Here are excerpts from that presentation. This series of posts will cover a lot of the same ground as was […]
In Part 3 of this series, we explore why joint tax returns were so common even after major tax-law changes in 1917.
A common misconception I run into is the assumption among married couples that, if they file separately, it’s the same as filing as two single people. This is not the case.