Married & Taxes??

how does this work??

i've always filed the EZ forms...it's gonna be kinda neat to fill the box "married" and not "single"...

aaaand am i the only lame-o who practices her new signature???

No idea how it works...I've always filed the EZ forms too.

My signature is indecipherable, and I don't know that I'll change it. Still debating whether or not to take FI's last name, so maybe practicing writing it will help me decide how I feel about it? Good idea!

I love practicing my soon to be new name, when I have down time! lol I was kinda on the fence with this one but FI insisted I take his name.

My first marrage... (oops, I mean, my mistake), and I think we used the EZ b/c we were making bare min. and only one job a piece.

Now that I have Shawn, he actually does the takes for me. We started using the Turbo Tax software and it does all the thinking for me. :) I was tired of figuring out which forms to fill out.

Ok, truthfully... I've just gotten lazy...

:)

No idea about the tax thing....However, I am also a huge lame-o and ALWAYS practice my new signiture! I play FI's nintendo DS before going to bed and I'm spend more time on the scribble pad than I do on the game! hehee

I actually never practiced my signature until after the wedding... I don't know why, but I never thought about it. My signature isn't anything special, just me writing my name in cursive. ;-P

For the tax thing, we filed joint returns for the first time this Spring and we just used TaxCut or TurboTax software, I can't remember which. We just answered the questions and filed. It was pretty similar to what we used to do before we just had to include both of our information. No biggie. ;-)

D1rty- you're not the only one. I practice my signature too. I feel like I'm in grade school all over again signing my name with the guy I have a crush on! haha

If you are doing the standard deduction and not itemizing, you can still do the EZ form.  The only thing getting married does is changes deductions.  If you own a house, then you would want to change to the 1040 long form and itemize your deductions.  Also, I would look in to married filing separately options.  For us, most years, that works the best except for the last year where we got a bigger tax incentive check if we filed jointly.

Well it also depends on whether you are having a marriage liscence or a marriage contract. We are having a marriage contract which allows us to file taxes separately.

I use hrblock.com when I was single and now that we're married.  It will run the numbers a married filing single as well as married filing jointly so you can see which way is best for your situation.

I will warn you ladies...no matter which way you file, if you and your FI/DH earn about the same income, you will end up paying higher taxes than when you were single.  No joke!  Last year (we got married) we owed 3 times as much than when we were single (and our incomes didn't not increase 300%)!  Totally sucks.  We're STILL paying that tax bill.