What is my Filing Status?

When filing tax returns, the first thing to think about is the income tax filing status. People often ask 'what is my filing status?' because believe it or not, tax filing status can be confusing. Below is a flow chart to help a tax payer determine what his or her filing status is.

When determining the income tax filing status, the first thing to detemine is if you are married or not. If you are not married then you are either single or you are a widow or widower.

Are you married?

If you are married then the easiest and the most common income tax filing status is fling jointly with your spouse. In tax term, this is called 'marreid filing jointly' or MFJ.

If you are married but for some reasons do not want to file jointly with your spouse, you can either file as a Head of Household or 'married filing separately' or MFS. Since filing as a Head of Household is a better tax filing status due to more tax deductions allowed, if you can file as a Head of Household, you should. To qualify as a Head of Household, you must:

• have paid over half of home maintenance cost for hte entire year
• your spouse must not have lived in your house for the last 6 months of the Tax year.
• your Home is the main home for more than 6 months for your dependent child