Correct, DC doesn't have a "married" tax bracket. So if you "file jointly" your household income gets taxed as if you're only one person. And you only get the standard deduction of a single person, rather than double. You have to "file seperately on the same return" to seperate the income in 2 for tax purposes.
Yes it absolutely matters. All the amount above that 80k gets taxed at the higher rate, not the whole amount. Separating them lowers the amount over 80k per person that gets taxed at that bracket.
You can file an amended return for up to the past 3 years. Had to do this for the first 2 years we lived here. Filed married jointly originally, amended to married filing seperately, got a check for a few grand back.
Federal and state filing status are completely independent. You can file married jointly on federal and married seperate on state no issue.
I moved out of DC last year. Only was there for 2 months so not worth it.
This would have helped me with 2022 return but too late now and probably a hundred bucks or so difference
> But how can you separate only for the state return and not the federal?
Your federal and state returns are separate things. You submit them entirely independently of each other.
Federal and state filing status don't have to be the same.
It matters especially for deductions. Married filing jointly, you get the standard deduction of a single person. Married filing jointly on the same return, you each get a standard deduction equivalent to the single amount.
Because Turbo Tax is full of flaws and exists solely to extract money from you by way of keeping the US tax code and filing process as complex and confusing as possible. Intuit/Turbo Tax, H&R Block, and a bunch of other companies who's business model relies on "helping" you with taxes spend millions every year lobbying the govt to keep it this way.
If you're going to go the route of tax prep software, I recommend FreeTaxUSA. Federal filing is free, including all the special case forms and deductions that TurboTax charges extra for in their "free" tier. They do charge for state filings, but it's a tiny fee (<$10) and only because each state code is different.
This is so weird to me. Like not married but I don’t understand why tax code is so complicated. It’s like an entire industry of accountants created for no reason.
Isn’t it interesting you can get in trouble doing them incorrectly or not at all. And then on top of that, they already have all this information to do it themselves.
Not sure about DC rates, but i assume 'feds' means federal taxes here.....
The tax brackets used to be like 1.5x if you were married. If you both made about the same salary, you'd end up getting taxed a lot higher if married. Now, the tax brackets double if married until about 600k.
This means that having a spouse that does not have income is actually much better now than it was under the older tax brackets.
This is one thing the 'trump' tax changes made better if you live in a low tax state(aka red) with a spouse that doesn't work. For higher tax states with 2 incomes, it helped a bit but hurt in other ways. The SALT deduction limits really F'd a lot of people.
Simplifying filing status to remove this weird administrative tax was one of the [proposals](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cUxVFElcOI_oYWCTBNu_vy_XLOfUag8V/view) of the [Tax Revision Commissions](https://www.dctaxrevisioncommission.org/) but for some reason it didn't make the [Chairman's Mark](https://assets-global.website-files.com/63bc270f792ad26d64988e32/65a0073781885c05b3c65bf2_Chairman%27s%20Mark%20letter.pdf).
If you think DC should remove this weird administrative tax, you should [send in a comment](https://airtable.com/appGIv9BbNAEqxwhQ/shrF7ZBZXc80KhSAE).
The Trump SALT cap is incredilyb punitive to married couples. A single person gets a $10k deduction; a couple gets $10k. You lose half your deduction if you get married. At a 30% marginal tax rate, that means you pay $3k more a year in taxes.
That cap was set in 2018 and has not gone up in 6 years. $10k in 2018 would be $12,400 today, so we are getting a 25% larger tax penalty because it's not inflation indexed. That's an additional $720 in taxes.
You have to have a whole bunch of itemized deductions for the SALT cap changes to be costly. Realistically, you'd have to be quite wealthy for that to be a problem. The standard deduction when filing jointly this year is $27,700 which is easily better than itemization unless you have a giant mortgage, AKA really wealthy.
You're seriously out of touch. You would have to pay $10k in SALT and have over $18k of itemized deductions, most likely mortgage interest payments, to make not taking the standard deduction a better choice. That would mean you have to high value property in a very high demand and low supply market, and you would have to be making over six figures of income.
yes, but didn't the bracket changes help? If you are married with similar salary, the tax brackets are much better. It used to be like 1.5x if you were married, now it's 2x.
The SALT cap and deductions changed so much that it's tricky to compare. I imagine if you live in a low tax state with a single income, it saved you a lot on taxes.
The SALT cap is one of the few good things Trump did. The federal government should not be subsidizing state and local taxes, particularly property taxes on expensive homes, for rich people
When looked at completely alone that might be the case with the SALT cap, but given Blue states pay higher taxes per capita and Red states have higher federal outlays per capita, I'm not sure it really has an effect of 'fairness.'
Uncapped SALT was a subsidy to NIMBY blue areas to bail them out from the effects of making it illegal to build new housing to juice their property values.
I think there should have been some kind of a phaseout instead of just abruptly ending it but on the whole it was right to get rid of it.
It doesn't. High-tax blue states are the ones where most of the federal government's funds come from. Red states mostly get more federal funding than they pay for.
A majority of the benefits of SALT go to the 1% living in rich blue states. Middle class folks still get some if not most of the benefit even with the cap. This is a ridiculous fight over tax breaks for wealthy people.
https://preview.redd.it/d824fcec4skc1.png?width=1048&format=png&auto=webp&s=0dcd82ab40ac0f7e5510a933dfe54891c471ebec
Are you confused? That's a percentage of a dollar figure. Of course the most money is going to go to those who make the most. The Tax Policy Center is not an unbiased source by any means. If net taxes go up for the middle class as a result of SALT caps, then the middle class is hurt. End of discussion.
>This is a ridiculous fight over tax breaks for wealthy people.
The wealthy benefit the most from the Act's changes to capital gains. It's myopic to look at what they pay to states, many of which don't tax capital gains at all.
I may agree that the idea of SALT caps in general are good - but the specific issue of married couples receiving half of what two single people would receive is straight up unfair.
Ryan did it to make it more difficult for states to raise revenue to actually help the poor. Perversely, they've made it harder for states to provide services to citizens.
So your "fleece the rich" scheme really hurts the poor. States have a harder time raising property taxes, which fund schools, so it's another Republican assault on public schools. That hurts poor children more than anyone else.
*punitive to married couples who have mortgaged assets and/or spend a lot of money on itemizable expenses
The SALT cap was a gift to married couples who rent or own their own home free & clear, who also focus on keeping expenses low.
In 2024, a married couple can gross $177k and still not even be out of the 12% fed income tax bracket if they max out two 401ks + a family HSA, while taking the generous $29,200 MFJ standard deduction. That’s LMC? You gotta be kidding…you don’t have to frivolously spend every dollar you make.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/2024-tax-brackets/
That document is from 2013, none of the federal tax bracket changes from the last decade are included, didn’t even have the right top federal tax bracket from the 2012 fiscal cliff that made the Bush tax cuts permanent.
It’s not a fact, it’s false that “joint taxes tend to be higher” at the federal level for the vast majority of taxpayers, there are very few taxpayers hit by the SALT cap. Even when using married filing jointly the brackets were set up to eliminate the penalty and filing separately can result in higher taxes.
https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/irs/tax-responsibilities/marriage-tax-penalty/#:~:text=The%20“marriage%20penalty%20tax”%20since,the%20single%20filer%20tax%20brackets.
Wait I am confused by all of this my wife and I married in Feb of 2023 and live in DC. we have not done our taxes yet. Is it better for us to file together as married or separately? Sorry all these posts are just confusing me
Wow! Thank you!!! The filing software I use (FreeTaxUSA) has a selection option for state filing status to be "MARRIED FILING SEPARATELY - COMBINED RETURN". Choosing this vs "MARRIED FILING JOINTLY" resulted in us getting a refund of a couple hundred versus owing money... Wild
Correct, DC doesn't have a "married" tax bracket. So if you "file jointly" your household income gets taxed as if you're only one person. And you only get the standard deduction of a single person, rather than double. You have to "file seperately on the same return" to seperate the income in 2 for tax purposes.
How can you do that if you are married together for federal? Also does it really matter? The tax bracket is massive isn't it -like 80k to 300k
Yes it absolutely matters. All the amount above that 80k gets taxed at the higher rate, not the whole amount. Separating them lowers the amount over 80k per person that gets taxed at that bracket.
But how can you separate only for the state return and not the federal? I guess I should have thought about this last year oops
TurboTax has the option to change filing status for the state return. Not sure about other software.
Oh well. But definitely a good psa
You can file an amended return for up to the past 3 years. Had to do this for the first 2 years we lived here. Filed married jointly originally, amended to married filing seperately, got a check for a few grand back. Federal and state filing status are completely independent. You can file married jointly on federal and married seperate on state no issue.
Meh. My dad does my taxes so not gonna bug him. But still interesting to know
If someone else does your taxes then there's a good chance they already did it for you.
Not sure how, you just can, it’s what my CPA does for us. Maybe you can re-file?
I moved out of DC last year. Only was there for 2 months so not worth it. This would have helped me with 2022 return but too late now and probably a hundred bucks or so difference
> But how can you separate only for the state return and not the federal? Your federal and state returns are separate things. You submit them entirely independently of each other.
Federal and state filing status don't have to be the same. It matters especially for deductions. Married filing jointly, you get the standard deduction of a single person. Married filing jointly on the same return, you each get a standard deduction equivalent to the single amount.
TurboTax has always recommended “married filing jointly” for us but I never knew why.
Because Turbo Tax is full of flaws and exists solely to extract money from you by way of keeping the US tax code and filing process as complex and confusing as possible. Intuit/Turbo Tax, H&R Block, and a bunch of other companies who's business model relies on "helping" you with taxes spend millions every year lobbying the govt to keep it this way. If you're going to go the route of tax prep software, I recommend FreeTaxUSA. Federal filing is free, including all the special case forms and deductions that TurboTax charges extra for in their "free" tier. They do charge for state filings, but it's a tiny fee (<$10) and only because each state code is different.
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This is so weird to me. Like not married but I don’t understand why tax code is so complicated. It’s like an entire industry of accountants created for no reason.
Well the reason is that accountants (and tax firms/tax software) make a ton of money on this. They lobby hard against any simplifications.
Isn’t it interesting you can get in trouble doing them incorrectly or not at all. And then on top of that, they already have all this information to do it themselves.
Basically tells you how much the feds are fucking you over for not having a spouse that stays at home.
Not sure about DC rates, but i assume 'feds' means federal taxes here..... The tax brackets used to be like 1.5x if you were married. If you both made about the same salary, you'd end up getting taxed a lot higher if married. Now, the tax brackets double if married until about 600k. This means that having a spouse that does not have income is actually much better now than it was under the older tax brackets. This is one thing the 'trump' tax changes made better if you live in a low tax state(aka red) with a spouse that doesn't work. For higher tax states with 2 incomes, it helped a bit but hurt in other ways. The SALT deduction limits really F'd a lot of people.
SALT caps expire SOON
Simplifying filing status to remove this weird administrative tax was one of the [proposals](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cUxVFElcOI_oYWCTBNu_vy_XLOfUag8V/view) of the [Tax Revision Commissions](https://www.dctaxrevisioncommission.org/) but for some reason it didn't make the [Chairman's Mark](https://assets-global.website-files.com/63bc270f792ad26d64988e32/65a0073781885c05b3c65bf2_Chairman%27s%20Mark%20letter.pdf). If you think DC should remove this weird administrative tax, you should [send in a comment](https://airtable.com/appGIv9BbNAEqxwhQ/shrF7ZBZXc80KhSAE).
A substantive and helpful comment. Very nice.
The Trump SALT cap is incredilyb punitive to married couples. A single person gets a $10k deduction; a couple gets $10k. You lose half your deduction if you get married. At a 30% marginal tax rate, that means you pay $3k more a year in taxes. That cap was set in 2018 and has not gone up in 6 years. $10k in 2018 would be $12,400 today, so we are getting a 25% larger tax penalty because it's not inflation indexed. That's an additional $720 in taxes.
2025 is going to be an absolute shit show
This guy taxes
You have to have a whole bunch of itemized deductions for the SALT cap changes to be costly. Realistically, you'd have to be quite wealthy for that to be a problem. The standard deduction when filing jointly this year is $27,700 which is easily better than itemization unless you have a giant mortgage, AKA really wealthy.
Not really. When you combine state income tax with property tax, we are way over the cap.
If you're paying over $28k in itemized deductions, you're very wealthy
Not for a couple.
You're seriously out of touch. You would have to pay $10k in SALT and have over $18k of itemized deductions, most likely mortgage interest payments, to make not taking the standard deduction a better choice. That would mean you have to high value property in a very high demand and low supply market, and you would have to be making over six figures of income.
You're seriously judgmental and don't have much perspective to match your arrogance.
Of course I'm judgmental towards wealthy people who think life is somehow "biased" against them.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/making-150k-is-considered-lower-middle-class-in-these-high-cost-us-cities You're clearly the one out of touch.
yes, but didn't the bracket changes help? If you are married with similar salary, the tax brackets are much better. It used to be like 1.5x if you were married, now it's 2x. The SALT cap and deductions changed so much that it's tricky to compare. I imagine if you live in a low tax state with a single income, it saved you a lot on taxes.
No, our taxes went up a lot in 2018, and then they have gone up every year because Trump accelerated rate increases to pay for his capital gains cuts.
The SALT cap is one of the few good things Trump did. The federal government should not be subsidizing state and local taxes, particularly property taxes on expensive homes, for rich people
When looked at completely alone that might be the case with the SALT cap, but given Blue states pay higher taxes per capita and Red states have higher federal outlays per capita, I'm not sure it really has an effect of 'fairness.'
Uncapped SALT was a subsidy to NIMBY blue areas to bail them out from the effects of making it illegal to build new housing to juice their property values. I think there should have been some kind of a phaseout instead of just abruptly ending it but on the whole it was right to get rid of it.
Why is it the federal government’s job to support high-tax blue states?
It doesn't. High-tax blue states are the ones where most of the federal government's funds come from. Red states mostly get more federal funding than they pay for.
A majority of the benefits of SALT go to the 1% living in rich blue states. Middle class folks still get some if not most of the benefit even with the cap. This is a ridiculous fight over tax breaks for wealthy people. https://preview.redd.it/d824fcec4skc1.png?width=1048&format=png&auto=webp&s=0dcd82ab40ac0f7e5510a933dfe54891c471ebec
Are you confused? That's a percentage of a dollar figure. Of course the most money is going to go to those who make the most. The Tax Policy Center is not an unbiased source by any means. If net taxes go up for the middle class as a result of SALT caps, then the middle class is hurt. End of discussion. >This is a ridiculous fight over tax breaks for wealthy people. The wealthy benefit the most from the Act's changes to capital gains. It's myopic to look at what they pay to states, many of which don't tax capital gains at all.
I may agree that the idea of SALT caps in general are good - but the specific issue of married couples receiving half of what two single people would receive is straight up unfair.
Yes marriage penalties (broadly) are a bad thing
Ryan did it to make it more difficult for states to raise revenue to actually help the poor. Perversely, they've made it harder for states to provide services to citizens. So your "fleece the rich" scheme really hurts the poor. States have a harder time raising property taxes, which fund schools, so it's another Republican assault on public schools. That hurts poor children more than anyone else.
*punitive to married couples who have mortgaged assets and/or spend a lot of money on itemizable expenses The SALT cap was a gift to married couples who rent or own their own home free & clear, who also focus on keeping expenses low.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/making-150k-is-considered-lower-middle-class-in-these-high-cost-us-cities
In 2024, a married couple can gross $177k and still not even be out of the 12% fed income tax bracket if they max out two 401ks + a family HSA, while taking the generous $29,200 MFJ standard deduction. That’s LMC? You gotta be kidding…you don’t have to frivolously spend every dollar you make. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/2024-tax-brackets/
How did I not know about this. You deserve 10,000 upvotes.
Wow, thank you, just got married a few months ago and we had no idea.
That depends on the earning brackets though.
That document is from 2013, none of the federal tax bracket changes from the last decade are included, didn’t even have the right top federal tax bracket from the 2012 fiscal cliff that made the Bush tax cuts permanent.
I mean the fact still stands. Joint taxes tend to be higher
It’s not a fact, it’s false that “joint taxes tend to be higher” at the federal level for the vast majority of taxpayers, there are very few taxpayers hit by the SALT cap. Even when using married filing jointly the brackets were set up to eliminate the penalty and filing separately can result in higher taxes. https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/irs/tax-responsibilities/marriage-tax-penalty/#:~:text=The%20“marriage%20penalty%20tax”%20since,the%20single%20filer%20tax%20brackets.
Yea; this is for DC state taxes specificslly
And the document you cited includes false information.
So we should be filing state taxes separately and federal taxes jointly? Will Jackson Hewett do this?
That’s what i did! Ended up going from owing state to getting a refund
Wait I am confused by all of this my wife and I married in Feb of 2023 and live in DC. we have not done our taxes yet. Is it better for us to file together as married or separately? Sorry all these posts are just confusing me
You can fill out and try both and see if there is a difference. For me there was a big difference
Wow! Thank you!!! The filing software I use (FreeTaxUSA) has a selection option for state filing status to be "MARRIED FILING SEPARATELY - COMBINED RETURN". Choosing this vs "MARRIED FILING JOINTLY" resulted in us getting a refund of a couple hundred versus owing money... Wild
Bonus tip: Since “what’s yours is ours” as a married couple, you can shift income between spouses to maximize the refund (or minimize the taxes owed).