You do not have to file a tax return if you owe only
household employment taxes. If you hire any type of household
employees, you may owe household employment taxes. These include
housekeepers, maids, basysitters, and gardeners. These people are your
employees if you control how they do their work. File Schedule H, Household
Employment Taxes, instead. Schedule H can be filed by itself and if you paid
any one household employee cash wages of $1,800 or more during the year.
If more than one filing status applies to you,
choose the one that will give you the lowest tax. You obtained a
divorce on December 26, 2013. At the time of your divorce in
2013 you intended to and did remarry each other on August of
2014. You and your spouse must file your tax return as Married
Filing Jointly or Married Filing Separately.
If your spouse died during the tax year, you are
considered married for the whole tax year for filing status
purposes. If you remarried before the end of the tax year, you
must file a joint tax return with your new spouse and your
deceased spouse's filing status would be married filing separately.
If you actively participated in a passive rental
real estate activity that produced a loss, you generally can
deduct the loss from your nonpassive income up to a certain
amount. This called a special allowance. Married persons filing
separate tax returns who live together at any time during the
tax year cannot claim this special allowance.
You can change your filing status by filing an
amended tax return using Form 1040X. If you or your spouse (or
both) file a separate tax return, you generally can change to a
joint tax return any time within 3 years from the due date of the separate
tax return or returns.If
you and your spouse file a joint tax return, you cannot choose to file
separate tax returns for that year after the due date of the tax return.A personal representative for a decedent can
change from a joint tax return elected by the surviving spouse
to a separate tax return for the decedent. The personal
representative has 3 years from the due date (including
extensions) of the tax return to make the change.
In qualifying for head of household filing status
and in calculating the expenses of keeping up a home, include in
the cost of upkeep expenses such as rent, mortgage interest,
real estate taxes, insurance on the home, repairs and utilities,
and food eaten in the home. The cost of upkeep expenses for calculating the
cost of upkeep expenses would not include the rental value of a home you
own.
You may be eligible to file as head of household
if the individual who is born or died during the year qualifies
you for this filing status and you must have provided more than
half of the cost of keeping up a home that was the individual's main home
for the period during which the individual lived.
There are five tests that must be met for a child
to be your qualifying child to be claimed as a dependent. They are the
relationship, age, residency, support and joint return tests. Likewise,
there are four tests that must be met for a person to by your qualifying
relative. These tests are the not your qualifying child test, the member or
household or relationship test, the gross income test and the support test.
In summary, you can claim an exemption for a qualifying child
or qualifying relative if you meet the dependency taxpayer test,
joint tax return test, and the citizen or resident test. There are two types of exemptions you can take.
They are personal exemptions which include exemptions for yourself
