Married filing separate, my clients return was rejected, his wife used his ss# on her return in the middle of a divorce. My client just filed his 2016 return.

[corteztaxservice]

My client didnt file a 2016 return, so I did his return and it was rejected, dues to the ex wife filing and using his ss#. He doesnt know her filing status and they had filed for divoce in 2016. I put Single for his filing status. Once it was rejected he told me that they had filed for divoce in 2016 that the divorce wasnt final till 2017. 

So I have to amend the filing status and put married filing separate, but his dollar amount he was owing went from $699.00 to $5027.00 and I have no clue why. 

[abctax55 · Accepted solution]

Married filing separate is generally the highest tax bracket AND many things are disallowed when using MFS.  I'm not surprised his tax increased, substantially.  

As to the why, compare all numbers from the "Single" return to the "MFS" return to determine differences, and the validity of the differences

[IntuitTracy]

@corteztaxservice you can copy the return, make one Single like @abctax55 mentioned and the other MFS. Then you can compare the returns from the Check Return or Preview Forms to see a breakdown line by line.

[Accountant-Man]

It went up because of the status. If they truly were divorced in 2017, she can file MFS or HOH in 2016, so your guy needs to paper file or file MFS.