Posts Tagged ‘married’

Top Ten Hookups You Should Marry To Survive the Recession

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Dude, like you should SO get married to some of the hookups in your circle of friends, I mean, like, dude, come on!

 skankus1

 

1.   Skankus – Dude, you know Skankus!  She is the one in your circle of friends who is always hooking up with everybody else and you know if you just LOOK at her she will get pregnant.  Man, she is a money machine.  Put her working parts to good use.  Take care of business and marry her because each kid she generates is a deduction at tax time.  Good stuff, unless you enter AMT territory.

 nerdus

 

2.  Nerdus – You want to marry this guy, you know, the one you always were “just friends” with while you slept with all your friends?  You want to marry him because he will be the one who starts up some social web site that will make millions and you can always divorce him since he was a starter husband later on.  Make bank, girl friend!

 

 yournextwife

 

3.   Goofus – You want to marry this guy or gal because they can make you laugh.  Not only intentionally but their whole miserable existence is a comedy.  You can always talk them into going on Jerry Springer and make some cash.  Get a trip out of town with them, too.  Please don’t forget to remind them to make their AA meetings!

 

 fruitsy

 

4.    Fruitsy McVeggies – This gal or guy is HEAVY into the non-meat lifestyle and can save your health and a bundle of money.  The downside is that they will drive you nuts with trying to keep everything meat free.  If you can live with the sermonizing, these people will make you live forever or at least until you get sick of eating veggies your whole life.  By the way, I love meat, fruit and veggies.

 

jocko

 

5.   Jocko – This guy (or gal) hits the gym and hits it hard.  Like Fruitsy, they will keep you alive forever with great health and workouts.  And if you don’t work out  enough, they will kill you.

 

oinks

 

6.   Oinks – You gotta love Oinks.  He is just big boned and if in the coming years money gets devalued and you need to start living off the land, Oinks has a lot of meat on his bones to make it through any hard times without eating if he has to.

 

allergymcsnee

 

7.   Allergy St. Sneeze – Not just one but eight allergies make this person a cornucopia of fun.  Nothing spells good times then trying to keep track of what is bugging them.  Plus side is they are thin from all the allergy meds they are taking.  Make sure you get lots of tissue as wedding presents.

 

carnuts

 

8.     Carnuts – This guy or gal loves his Chevy, Toyota, Alfa, Harley (in which case they are Cyclenuts) and they will love it more than you.  On the bright side, wait, there isn’t really a bright side to this one unless you love the same vehicle of choice that they do.

 

yelly

 

9.   Screamy Yellsovich – What marriage would be complete without a person like Screamy who constantly is yelling because everybody knows if you talk LOUD enough you have to be right.  Expect marriages to Screamy to last up to 7 years and end bitterly.  Plus you will be deaf.  Hey, you wanted a starter marriage, not me.

and last but not least

 

highmaint

 

10.    Moneyme Now – This person will only be with you if you are spending money on them.  Expect to be broke within a year and remind them that no, they really don’t deserve to have the best of everything because frankly, people like them aren’t worth it. Not even in thousands of years!

Dude, wait, come back here.  We haven’t even discussed what kind of awesome parents you would make!

On a  more serious and practical note – please check out my book on making money during the recession and taking care of financial problems.  Part of all proceeds from sales go to research a cure for Rett Syndrome.  Rett Syndrome affects a girl born every fifteen minutes and boys born with the Rett gene die at birth.  Peace and happy holidays!

  Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

 

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Top  Ten Hookups You Should Marry To Survive The Recession

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Married Filing Separately Question

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

A question from a reader:”Why is Married Filing Separately such a bad thing?  What happens if the marriage just isn’t working out?”

 

 

 

My answer is that this question gives me the perfect opportunity to get my comic strip chops working again. Okay, the drawings are bad but the content is funny. I have already been told that I have a bleak outlook on the institution of marriage. Not at all. I just see the humor of it in my own life and in others who are getting their taxes done. My wife laughed at it. She is one of my biggest critics so I might be onto something getting in shape for my graphic novel.

Back to the question…

Married Filing Separately does not allow the person (or persons) filing to maximize the deductions, credits, etc that they could get by either trying to see if they can put aside their differences one last time for tax purposes by filing Married Filing Jointly (MFJ). Don’t get me wrong, there may be very valid reasons for people to want to avoid filing with a spouse – they have left him/her, the spouse was discovered doing something illegal, etc. The unfortunate thing is that in community property states you may have problems that filing Married Filing Separately (MFS) won’t help with.

You start getting into “first strike” tax filing where whoever files first gets to call the shots for the other spouse.  What does that mean?  If the first spouse files and itemizes, that forces the other spouse to itemize even if that spouse didn’t have enough deductions and was better off taking the standard deduction.  In California because of it’s particular community property laws, you divide the Schedule A items in half evenly unless there were separate items brought into the marriage beforehand, etc. A lot of credits get thrown out of the window immediately and by virtue of filing MFS you throw yourself into a tax bracket that ends up paying more money.  Ugh.

Shared property or community property is a very big issue to take into account as well.  What factors should you consider to determine if community property rules apply? 

The three primary factors that IRS examiners look at are: 

1. Is there a legal marriage?
2. Are the spouses domiciled in a community property state?
3. Was the property acquired before (or after) the spouses were subject to community property laws?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Where people live or domicle comes into play as well. 
Why is domicile so important?  

Whether you have community property and community income depends on the law in the state where you maintain your domicile.  For example, if you earn a pension while domiciled in Texas, future distributions from the pension will be community income.  The pension is community property to the extent it was earned while your domicile was in Texas. If you earned the pension while domiciled in Oregon, distributions will be separate income.

For now, as of this post, you also have to mail in Married Filing Separtely returns in the state of California. You cannot electronically file them so that would delay getting a refund.

To answer your second question, if the marriage isn’t working out, the couple (or at least one party in the relationship) is probably trying very hard to get out of the situation similar to a coyote gnawing off his or her leg to escape a trap. There may be financial reasons or social-family reasons that the divorce just can’t happen yet. It isn’t from lack of trying from one or both of the parties, it is just that the realities of the situation may not allow it to happen yet for whatever reason.

It is also a good idea to not listen to bad advice about MFS.  There seems to be a great deal of it out there. If you take away nothing else from this article, make sure that you talk about money, relationships, your spending habits and everything else with your potential soulmate before you get married.  It will save you time, aggrevation, alimony, child support, restraining orders and perhaps a felony charge or two.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

 

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Married Filing Separately and the first Taxing Funnies comic.

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Thinking About Filing Statuses for Taxes

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

I received an email asking me what filing status should the person file under and I had to explain that without knowing all the background information I can’t make a good determination.  I am starting up teaching basic tax preparation again so I thought I would share some of my information with you, gentle profit oriented readers.

The IRS (google them, you will find them, trust me),  has more detail than you probably are interested in on the subject but let me try and bring the key points home here:

There are five filing statuses:

Single, Married Filing Jointly, Married Filing Separately, Head of Household, and Qualifying Widow(er) With Dependent Child.

If more than one filing status applies to you, choose the one that will give you the lowest tax.

Marital Status
In general, your filing status depends on whether you are considered unmarried or married. For federal tax purposes, a marriage means only a legal union between a man and a woman as husband and wife.

Unmarried persons.   You are considered unmarried for the whole year if, on the last day of your tax year, you are unmarried or legally separated from your spouse under a divorce or separate maintenance decree.

  State law governs whether you are married or legally separated under a divorce or separate maintenance decree.

Divorced persons.    If you are divorced under a final decree by the last day of the year, you are considered unmarried for the whole year.

Divorce and remarriage.   If you obtain a divorce in one year for the sole purpose of filing tax returns as unmarried individuals, and at the time of divorce you intended to and did remarry each other in the next tax year, you and your spouse must file as married individuals.

Annulled marriages.   If you obtain a court decree of annulment, which holds that no valid marriage ever existed, you are considered unmarried even if you filed joint returns for earlier years. You must file amended returns (Form 1040X) claiming single or head of household status for all tax years affected by the annulment that are not closed by the statute of limitations for filing a tax return. The statute of limitations generally does not expire until 3 years after your original return was filed.

Head of household or qualifying widow(er) with dependent child.   If you are considered unmarried, you may be able to file as a head of household or as a qualifying widow(er) with a dependent child. See Head of Household and Qualifying Widow(er) With Dependent Child to see if you qualify.

Married persons.   If you are considered married for the whole year, you and your spouse can file a joint return, or you can file separate returns.

Considered married.   You are considered married for the whole year if on the last day of your tax year you and your spouse meet any one of the following tests.
You are married and living together as husband and wife.

You are living together in a common law marriage that is recognized in the state where you now live or in the state where the common law marriage began.

You are married and living apart, but not legally separated under a decree of divorce or separate maintenance.

You are separated under an interlocutory (not final) decree of divorce. For purposes of filing a joint return, you are not considered divorced.
Spouse died during the year.   If your spouse died during the year, you are considered married for the whole year for filing status purposes.

  If you did not remarry before the end of the tax year, you can file a joint return for yourself and your deceased spouse. For the next 2 years, you may be entitled to the special benefits described later under Qualifying Widow(er) With Dependent Child.

  If you remarried before the end of the tax year, you can file a joint return with your new spouse. Your deceased spouse’s filing status is married filing separately for that year.

Married persons living apart.   If you live apart from your spouse and meet certain tests, you may be considered unmarried. If this applies to you, you can file as head of household even though you are not divorced or legally separated. If you qualify to file as head of household instead of as married filing separately, your standard deduction will be higher. Also, your tax may be lower, and you may be able to claim the earned income credit. See Head of Household, later.

Single
Your filing status is single if, on the last day of the year, you are unmarried or legally separated from your spouse under a divorce or separate maintenance decree, and you do not qualify for another filing status. To determine your marital status on the last day of the year, see Marital Status, earlier.

Widow(er).   Your filing status may be single if you were widowed before January 1, 2007, and did not remarry before the end of 2007. However, you might be able to use another filing status that will give you a lower tax. See Head of Household and Qualifying Widow(er) With Dependent Child, later, to see if you qualify.

How to file.   You can file Form 1040EZ (if you have no dependents, are under 65 and not blind, and meet other requirements), Form 1040A, or Form 1040. If you file Form 1040A or Form 1040, show your filing status as single by checking the box on line 1. Use the Single column of the Tax Table, or Section A of the Tax Computation Worksheet, to figure your tax.

Married Filing Jointly
You can choose married filing jointly as your filing status if you are married and both you and your spouse agree to file a joint return. On a joint return, you report your combined income and deduct your combined allowable expenses. You can file a joint return even if one of you had no income or deductions.

If you and your spouse decide to file a joint return, your tax may be lower than your combined tax for the other filing statuses. Also, your standard deduction (if you do not itemize deductions) may be higher, and you may qualify for tax benefits that do not apply to other filing statuses.

***

For more information, you can check with the IRS and you may be interested in checking out my book,

“Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea” for some tips that accountants and tax professionals might not give you.  You can find that book on Amazon (you can google to find that too).  All information posted here is for you to review and for more serious study and tax prepatation, kindly due your own research or consult your tax pro!

Good luck with your thoughts on Filing Statuses for Taxes!

Kim Greenblatt

 

You are in Kim Greenblatt’s blog, profitable, trying to figure out what filing status means for tax preparation!

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