Marketplace Health Insurance for Newly Married Couple

[amyc]

My proseries tax software is not calculating a different alternative monthly contribution amount for the months my taxpayers were not married.  Any help?  I tried support and they told me that there is no alternative allocation and that since my taxpayers were married on the last day of the year that we had to use their joint income for every month's PTC calculation.

[rbynaker]

Support is correct.  Usually bad things happen when someone on Marketplace insurance gets married.  Welcome to the law of unintended consequences.

Usually the only thing you can do is look at filing MFS to limit the payback amount (but often this still results in higher overall total tax.)

[TaxGuyBill · Accepted solution]

It most likely is checking if the alternative calculation lowers the repayment, but in many cases it does not lower the repayment.

Have you manually checked if the repayment would be lower if they used 50% of the Joint income in the non-marriage months?

[amyc]

They get the PTC for the first 9 months when they were not married if I use 1/2 their joint income when I manually calculate.  PS isn't calculating it.

[amyc]

You cannot file MFS and take the PTC. MFS excludes a taxpayer from being able to take the PTC all together

[TaxGuyBill]

I assume you've filled out the allocation information in ProSeries?  You have (1) filled out the month in the spot between lines 8 and 9 and (2) fill out Part V?

Even though they don't qualify for the credit when filing as MFS, it can still limit the repayment.

[amyc]

I am.  It was my mistake, they did not qualify based on 1/2 the income of the joint household in the months before married.  I was using actual spouse income that was on marketplace vs the 1/2 of the total household income.  Stinks that PS doesn't show you the calc they do on the back end.  That would be helpful to know it is calculating correctly. 🙂