Top Law Schools

Newly married 2L here. I've seen some of the posts about the creativity used during the summer to lower the amount of tax you end up paying for the summer. I was excited to do the same until I realized that I won't be filing as single anymore! My husband is also an attorney but with unpredictable bonuses so it's hard to figure out what our combined salary is going to look like. I have a meeting with our tax guy soon but I was curious to see what other married folks did to prevent a fat refund the next year.

domino9028 wrote:Newly married 2L here. I've seen some of the posts about the creativity used during the summer to lower the amount of tax you end up paying for the summer. I was excited to do the same until I realized that I won't be filing as single anymore! My husband is also an attorney but with unpredictable bonuses so it's hard to figure out what our combined salary is going to look like. I have a meeting with our tax guy soon but I was curious to see what other married folks did to prevent a fat refund the next year.

You still fill out the standard forms (w-4 etc) just ramp up your allowances.

Yeah, the IRS withholding calculator (available here: http://apps.irs.gov/app/withholdingcalculator/ ) will let you calculate it as married filing jointly. I would add that, if your post is a fairly complete picture of your finances, you are almost certainly overpaying your "tax guy."

Edit: I understand you still won't know your husband's bonus amount. The withholding mainly matters at the extremes though (e.g., withholding for 160k income when your summer income is ~33k). It's not a big deal if you thought your total income with his bonus would be $250k and instead it was $270k, as long as you are withholding at least 90% of the proper amount.