I really got hit with taxes this year and next year will likely be worse. I am trying to decide if it would be advantageous to file "married filing separately". Here is our situation.

My wife, who is also a physician, started working part-time on Jan 1. Her salary puts her in the middle of the 25% bracket. My salary puts me well into the 35% bracket. My thinking is this. She would be able to get the full deduction on our kids (3 children) and will be able to use most of our mortgage interest without running into the AMT (we will have 60K in mortgage interest). Both of these seem to phase out when filing a joint return. Also, her salary will be taxed at a lower bracket. If we filed jointly and she added her salary to mine, I would assume that it would be taxed at the 35% bracket.

Lastly, I am interested in the child tax credit. We have a nanny. We pay taxes on her. Is there a phase out on the child tax credit? Can we claim it if we chose married filing separately? Thank you so much for your advice.

Zip Code: 78132

From what I've seen, the greater your disparity in income, the better off you are by filing jointly.

Most tax software programs allow you to run an analysis comparing Married Joint with two Married Separate returns. Or you can just prepare two separate returns, and see which way you'd be better off.

With respect to the child tax credit, that is not available under the Married Separate filing status.

After tax season, I'd be glad to take a quick look at this with you. I'm pretty confident that you save thousands of dollars by filing jointly over filing separately.

Zip Code: 01801

thank you for your reply