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Level 3
November 28, 2021
Question

married filing separately and each claiming one of children

  • November 28, 2021
  • 24 replies
  • 61 views

I have  a married couple that has two children. If I file married separate for them and they each take one of their two children on their own tax return do they lose the child tax credit. they bought earn $90ish

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24 replies

Camp1040
Level 10
November 28, 2021

To receive the full 2021 credit, your modified adjusted gross income needs to be equal to or below:

  • $150,000 for married filing jointly
  • $112,500 for head of household filers
  • $75,000 for single and married filing separately filers.

If your income exceeds these amounts, the increase ($1,000 or $1,600) is reduced by $50 for each additional $1,000 in income. 

Level 3
November 28, 2021

The married filing couple I am referring to earned a total of $191,835 joint with no deductions coming off of that and they would get the $2000 per child tax credit per kid filing joint. ($4000) The phase out for 2020  based on modified AGI is $400,000 for filing joint and $200,000 for filing married separate. One parent makes $99,649 total income and the other $92,186 neither one of the two have any deductions student loan interest etc to deduct. That is their income, minus a $300 charitable deduction for married filing joint or a $150 deduction each for filing married separate. So first I am confused as to where you came up with the 2021 numbers, since this is for 2020. Filing separate and each taking one child as their dependent, should not affect the child tax credit of $2000 they would each get for each one of the two of their kids on their tax return correct? Please tell me if this is correct and then I will tell you why I am doing it this way.

 

Camp1040
Level 10
November 28, 2021

Yes...2021

The numbers just came to me in a vision.

PATAX
Level 12
November 28, 2021

My experience with married filing separate is that it is almost always not to the benefit of the taxpayer.... just my opinion...

BobKamman
Level 15
November 28, 2021

My experience with following hundreds of "innocent spouse" cases through IRS horror stories and Tax Court opinions is that MFS sometimes can be a life-changing benefit for taxpayers -- and one that is often overlooked by practitioners of the knee-jerk MFJ method.  

Jim-from-Ohio
Intuit Community Champion
November 29, 2021

In Ohio sometimes there is considerable savings with MFS with the savings on the Ohio side.