 Income tax 2021-2022. Alimony received. Get ready to get refunds to the max diving into income tax 2021-2022. Here we are in our income tax formula. We're focused in on line one, the income line. This is page one of our form 1040 looking at line number eight. Other income from schedule one. This is the schedule one part number one line number two. Alimony received. If there's anything in schedule one part number one, then it would flow through to the first page of the form 1040 on line number eight. So we're looking at Alimony just a quick rank recap of what Alimony is. Just have a general idea in your mind. The general idea would be if there's a divorce type of situation, the agreement that was laid out within the divorce settlement might have payments going from one spouse to the other. The payments classically were categorized as either child support or Alimony. The reason that classification in part was important is because there were different tax implications, which kind of made the classification between those two things a bigger deal than maybe it should be because it can kind of put some complexity in terms of the agreement that is going to be made. And so they changed that. So if the divorce happened after a certain point in time, the rules are going to be basically different, but they didn't want to change the tax implications for the rules that were in place when the agreement was made. So in other words, the thought process would would be we're going to change the law so that we don't have the different tax implications with regards to these two types of payments. But I'm only going to do that for contracts from this point going forward, which hopefully will simplify the contracts that are going to be made for a divorce kind of agreement because they don't have to add the complexity and argue over the classifications of the payments so much possibly, but we don't want to go back and change the tax implications of prior agreements, which have already been negotiated based on the prior tax situation. So now you have a situation where there could be a difference between the law. So it used to be that if something was categorized as child support, then you didn't have the tax implications on it. So notice that these payments, if you're talking about two different people now that are separated, they're going from one spouse is paying the other ex spouse, one ex spouse is paying the other ex spouse from a tax standpoint, the one that is paying would like to get a deduction from it because they're paying they're the payer from a tax standpoint, the one that is receiving the money would would like not to have to record it from an income on the IRS's standpoint from the IRS's standpoint, they're going to say if somebody gets a deduction, then the other person basically has to record it in income. We can't say one person gets the deduction and then the person that receives it doesn't get the income that wouldn't be in an alignment or in congruence, right? So they're going to say either no one gets the deduction and no one has to record it as income, or if someone gets the deduction, the other person has to record it as income. That's kind of the general rule. It used to be that if it was child support, then no one would get the deduction and no one would record it as income. And I think the general thought process there would be, well, if one spouse is paying the other spouse for the child, which is a joint something that there is joint to them both, then there shouldn't it should be benefiting them both and you shouldn't have any kind of deduction or having to record it as income. However, if it's alimony, it used to be that if it was categorized as alimony, the person that paid it got to deduct the payment. And we're not talking about the deduction side of it here. We're talking about the income side because we're focused in on income. And the person that received the alimony had to record it as income, which could affect their of course their income tax and all kinds of things on that side as well. So that's why you had some kind of when there's a divorce agreement, there's there's more complexity to it because you have to categorize the payments as alimony or child support. And then they came in and said, well, for later agreements, we're going to stop the capacity or stop having this situation where there's a difference in the tax consequences and say that even alimony is something that you don't get a deduction for and you don't get to record as income, which I think is probably, you know, an easier thing to do because it's because you can then negotiate because it should after you take the tax consequences into effect, then you should come up to some agreement, you know, that still basically might be the same as if the tax consequences were in effect, right? So I think adding the consequence of being able to deduct just adds more complexity, which makes the arrangement a bit more complex. So so I think it's probably a good thing. But in any case, now you've got this cut off to say, well, you could still have situations where the alimony has to be recorded in income if it was done prior to this new change in the law, if the agreement was made prior to this change in the law, and then current agreements or more recent agreements should be made given a new law that's in place that has the new regulations. That's the general idea. Alimony received line two a inter amounts received as alimony or separate maintenance pursuant to a divorce or separation agreement entered into on or before. Here's the cut off December 31, 2018, unless that agreement was changed was changed after December 31, 2018, to expressly provide that alimony received isn't included in your income. So there's the cut off. If it was prior to that, then it's most likely that the negotiation was made under the prior tax rules. And if everybody was happy with the prior tax rules, we don't want to change the tax rules, which are going to have an impact on the on the agreement that was made in the prior tax rules. We want to make the new rules going forward. And unless the new agreement wants to be made to be updated in accordance with the new tax law. So alimony received is not included in your income if you entered into a divorce or separation agreement after December 31, 2018. If you are included in alimony in your income, you must let the person who made the payments know your social security number. If you don't, you may have to pay a penalty for more details, you could see publication 504. So it's a similar situation with a 1099 kind of situation in that case, right? If if if some one person paid the other person and they get the deduction, they've got to tell who they got to tell the IRS who they paid the money to so that the so that they can charge the income, you know, on the other side. So if you are including alimony payments from more than one divorce or separation agreement in your income, enter the total of all alimony received online to a alimony received line to be online to be enter the month and year of your original divorce or separation agreement that relates to the alimony payment if any reported online to a so they want to have that date so they get they can get an idea of the law that should be applied to it. If you have an alimony payment from more than one divorce or separation agreement, enter line to be enter the month and year of the divorce or separation agreement for which you received the most income, attach a statement listing the month and year of the other agreements. So if you have a whole lot of different alimony agreements that have compiled over over a timeframe, then you might have to have a separate attachment to the tax return to list some more information out for the IRS in that case.