Of course he is .... and he 'splains it better than I, my dawg, or even Lucy did :).

Bottom line ... moving into a higher tax bracket doesn't mean a higher rate for all of your income .... that's what many don't "get".

Agreed .... but does it ever work out better for a married couple to file individually.... probably not often.

Run the numbers for sure....

I would agree that it is unlikely that individual makes sense. Our good old government has figured out to make sure they get the most out of us. Best to make sure all of the credits, deductions are captured, but with the standard deductions and on the last 2 years of mortgage, hard to itemize anymore.

Assuming that you guys are married and have been filing as married, I don't think it's going to work like that. Good luck.

I'm the primary earner. At one point my wife was a PhD candidate and getting a modest stipend. That radically changed our taxes. I don't remember the specifics, but I used TurboTax to check both married-jointly and married-separately, and what I seem to remember is the main difference was more paperwork, but it didn't change the bottom line.

Especially with the near ending of itemization and all income reported to the IRS....why can't we just go to an automatic tax filing system?

At the end of the year...you get a bill or a refund.
(fiing all the papers is redundant)

But then there's state taxes (or not), sales tax, property tax, filing cost, automotive registration costs, dependents, charitable contributions, etc... There are a bunch of things that can reduce (or increase) your taxes besides just the standard deductions. I don't usually get to take advantage of most of those items, but I occasionally get some sort of credit, and don't want to miss out on those.

^^^ Have those that see the need, file an exception...or credit form. (and close a lot of those deductions)

I know that if I forget to claim some income or make a mistake....the IRS will surely fix it.
They have all our important info.

Generally, filing joint is the best for most folks.

The place where making more (adding spousal income) can be disappointing is if you have deductions or credits that are limited by income. Contrary to popular belief, those making more usually get screwed because they lose a lot of credits/deduction because they make too much and many deductions/credits are simply thinly disguised social welfare (or the ceilings are poorly disguised punishment for working smarter and harder depending on your viewpoint). Either way, making more is always a good thing as you next raise is generally dependent upon your last and rarely do you lose money long term.

Here is an example of one (a credit) The text below lifted from the IRS:

...The American opportunity tax credit (AOTC) is a credit for qualified education expenses paid for an eligible student for the first four years of higher education. You can get a maximum annual credit of $2,500 per eligible student. If the credit brings the amount of tax you owe to zero, you can have 40 percent of any remaining amount of the credit (up to $1,000) refunded to you.

The amount of the credit is 100 percent of the first $2,000 of qualified education expenses you paid for each eligible student and 25 percent of the next $2,000 of qualified education expenses you paid for that student....

What are the income limits for AOTC?
To claim the full credit, your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) must be $80,000 or less ($160,000 or less for married filing jointly).
You receive a reduced amount of the credit if your MAGI is over $80,000 but less than $90,000 (over $160,000 but less than $180,000 for married filing jointly).
You cannot claim the credit if your MAGI is over $90,000 ($180,000 for joint filers)...."