Married Filing Jointly

[KD_MO]

Taxpayers married on 12/29/2018 and would like to file married filing jointly for 2018.  They lived in different state during the year.  After their honeymoon, they continued to live in different state and will live jointly in August in the same state in 2019.

Are they precluded from filing married filing jointly in 2018 because their jobs took them to different states?

[IntuitCharlene · Accepted solution]

The IRS Instructions for Married Filing Joint indicate:

A married couple filing jointly report
their combined income and deduct their
combined allowable expenses on one return. They can file a joint return even if
only one had income or if they didn't
live together all year.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf page 15. 

However on a state level you may need to review the best filing status if they have different residency status for the state.  What most people do if they run into allocation problems is create a Married Filing Joint return for Federal, and then split the return so they have a copy for Taxpayer and a copy for Spouse to complete the state returns separately. 

[mdavolio]

Hi,

On a federal tax return, you can file as married filing jointly for tax year 2018 if you were married at the end of 2018. Typically state returns follow the federal rules.

Thank you,

Mike D'Avolio

Intuit

[TaxMonkey]

Married people don't have to live together - ever - to file jointly.