 Income tax 2022-2023 filing status definitions. Let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Most of this information comes from the Form 1040 Instructions Tax Year 2022 line instructions found on the IRS website irs.gov irs.gov. Note when thinking about filing status. Filing status update bravo 3. This is such as single, married, filing, joint head of household and so on. That's at the top of the 1040 but has an impact on the income tax equations. Some of the major impacts would be on the standard deduction and possibly the tax rates. Item 7 our corporate tax rate. If we look at the first page of the Form 1040 the major impact is here on the standard deductions which are listed on the left hand side. We'll talk more about the standard deductions in future presentations. We talked about the filing statuses in general in a prior presentation. Now we want to go into some definitions that were used in some of those mainly in some of those kind of gray areas. So remember we're talking filing statuses such as support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Single well let's break them out by whether you're married or whether you're not married that's how I would typically think of them. So if you're not married then you could typically choose between or have the option of depending on the circumstances of single and then move up to head of households if you have the capacity to do that usually requiring a dependent in general or you can have the qualified widow widow were or the qualifying the surviving spouse is what they're calling it now same kind of thing as the qualified widow or widow were and then on the married side if married you could choose between married filing joint and married filing separate. Now we have some of those gray areas which often happen with regards to is someone currently married or are they not married due to possibly a divorce situation or separation kind of situation they can complicate which filing status someone should be in and with regards to the dependent oftentimes a dependent child custody issues with regards to the dependent child could cause problems when you're trying to determine a filing status between a single individual for example or a head of household situation obviously they would like to move up to a head of household situation if you can because that's usually a beneficial status from single in a tax scenario. Okay so qualifying child is something that came up in a prior presentation when we're thinking mainly at the head of household are requirements to find out if someone is a qualifying child you could see step one under who qualifies as your dependent so we will get into dependence later so note that some of the stuff is kind of intertwined right we're looking at the filing statuses but sometimes you've got the dependence that might be involved with the determination of filing statuses if we have a dependent as a requirement to determine the filing status then we've got to dive into what is a dependent who qualifies for a dependent which is another whole area in and of itself which we'll talk about in a future presentation so dependent to find out if someone is your dependent you can see who qualifies as your dependent later which we'll do shortly. Tip the dependents you claim are those you list by name and social security number SSN and the dependent section of the form 1040 1040 SR so the dependents of course are on the page one of the 1040 they have their own implications from a tax implication in that you might have for example a credit related to the dependent and they could have some impacts on the filing statuses as we are seeing here exception to time lived with you so we've got this time lived with you kind of rule that was put in place that we saw in a couple areas most likely in the head of household areas so we have the exception to time lived with you here temporary absences by you or the other person for special circumstances such as school vacation business medical care military service or detention in juvenile facility count as time lived in the home so when you're talking about it such also see kidnapped child later under who qualifies as your dependent if applicable so when we have these kind of qualifications that someone has to live with you for example for half the year or something like that then you're going to say well what if they were had an issue where they're somewhere else like having a medical situation or juvenile facility or something like that for part of the period then what does that do to that kind of calculation of having lived in the home and these are the exceptions then in those instances if the person for whom you kept up a home was born or died in 2022 you still may be able to file as head of household so now you have a situation hopefully there's a tragic type of situation here where you have an individual that was possibly a dependent you've got this rule saying that they have to be living with you for a certain part of the year possibly half the year but they died in 2022 well that of course is going to going to skew how long you would consider they would they would live with you so if they died in there you might have an exception to that requirement of the rule so if the person is your qualifying child the child must have lived with you for more than half the part of the year the child was alive so that's going to be the rule then the the period that they're alive not the entire year because that's going to skew that's going to mess up the calculation in the timeframe period that they were alive within that year uh did they live with you say for like half the year for example if that's the rule being applied so if the person is anyone else you could see publication 501 that's on iris.gov website similarly if you adopted the person for whom you kept up a home in 2022 the person was lawfully placed with you for legal adoption by you in 2022 or the person was an eligible foster child placed with you during 2022 the person is considered to have lived with you for more than half 2022 if your main home was this person's main home for more than half the time since the person was adopted or placed with you in 2022 so keeping up a home what does that mean exactly to find out what is included in the cost of keeping up a home you can see publication 501 so that's on the irs website usually it's fairly you know fairly straightforward when you're thinking about keeping up a home but you're thinking you know the costs of keeping up a home and so on and so forth but uh you can imagine a gray area in terms of the definition there so if you want to dive in to a bit more of the weeds on the definition of keeping up a home publication 501 iris website iris.gov iris.gov married person who live apart so now you've got the we saw we saw when we're looking at the different definitions and we broke out into our somewhat rigid categories of either the options if you're single versus the options if you're married but if we have a married couple that is separated in some way then the the gray area that comes up is well are they legally separated can they now be going from the only options when married which is married filing joint or married filing separate to the options that are usually only available if single which would be filing single head or head of household so even if you weren't divorced or legally separated at the end of 2022 you are considered unmarried if all of the following apply so you lived apart from your spouse for the last six months of 2022 temporary absence for special circumstances such as for business medical care school or military service count as time lived in the home so you file a separate return from your spouse you paid over half the cost of keeping up your home for 2022 your home was the main home of your child step child or foster child for more than half of 2022 if half or less you can see exception to time lived with you earlier you can claim this child as your dependent or could claim the child except that the child's other parent can claim the child under the rule for children of divorced or separate parents under who qualifies as your dependent later so we've got some caveats there this this general kind of caveats being oftentimes with these custody issues with a child in a separation situation who's you know and then we can we'll possibly dive into more rules on that kind of gray area in a future presentation so adopted child an adopted child is always treated as your own child so whenever that comes up it's usually a pretty straightforward situation except for in the year of adoption can be a little bit muddy and whatnot but after that you would think okay no no problem acts just like a normal child at least for the tax situation an adopted child includes a child lawfully placed with you for legal adoption foster child a foster child is any child placed with you by an authorized placement agency or by judgment decree or other order of any court of competent jurisdiction qualifying surviving spouse you can check the qualifying surviving spouse box at the top of form 1040 or 1040 SR and use joint return tax rates for 2022 if all of the following apply so you got the qualifying surviving spouse used to be qualifying widow widow were a type of situation so once again you've got either married or not married if you're married then you would be filing married filing joint married filing separate if you're not married head of household or single single being worse head of household being better and then possibly you've got this other one which would be the qualifying surviving spouse which would be better still although a tragic situation because you'd get a better tap for taxes it would be a better situation than even head of household because you're basically getting the rates kind of like you were still married now remember if someone if a spouse dies then you would expect the year of death would still be filed married filing joint because the person the spouse that died is still going to have income in that year so you would expect they would still of course need to file a tax return their final tax return in that year typically married filing joint so that kind of makes sense it's the years after death where you're saying okay should the surviving spouse now be filing single or as a qualifying widow or surviving spouse so number one your spouse died in 2020 or 2021 and you didn't remarry before the end of 2022 number two you have a child or step child not a foster child whom you can claim as a dependent or could claim as a dependent except that for 2022 a the child has gross income of 4400 or more so meaning they still might allow you to qualify for a qualifying surviving spouse even in essence if not a dependent because they don't meet the dependent requirement in this case the income requirement in that case or be the child filed a joint return so meaning they would have qualified as a dependent but they filed the joint return because they got married so therefore they wouldn't be dependent on your return but possibly still allow you to qualify for the filing status of qualifying surviving spouse see you could be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return so if the child isn't claimed as your dependent enter the child's name in the entry space below the filing status checkbox so in other words if you're if you're filing for a qualifying surviving spouse situation you would expect normally they would be a dependent that would be the qualify a qualifying factor to allow you to check that box and and have the benefits related to the qualifying surviving spouse versus single filing but if you don't have a dependent because it's one of these weird situations then you're going to still need to provide the dependent information even though it's not going to be like the as a normal dependent so that you can tell the IRS that that's the factor that's the rule allowing you to qualify so three this child lived in your home for all of 2022 for all of 2022 so if the child didn't live with you for the required time you can see the exception to time lived with you later number four you paid over half the cost of keeping up your home and number five you could have filed a joint return with your spouse the year your spouse died even if you didn't actually do so meaning when they died you probably filed a married filing joint return at the year of death or possibly you could have done so and if you didn't then you may filed a married filing separate return separate so if your spouse died in 2022 you can't file as a qualifying surviving spouse instead see instruction for married filing jointly earlier so in other words if they died in the year of 2022 the year in question here then you might your first thought might be well if i'm thinking about they're married at the end of the year then they're married you would think well if they if there was a death in 2022 before the end of the year then they would know then you'd have to account for that at the point of death but note it's different and it makes sense that it's different when someone dies a spouse dies because the spouse that died is still going to have income so you would think that you would still need to file like married filing joint so that you can have a joint return you know claiming the income you know in the year of the death and then this qualifying surviving spouse thing possibly after the year of death so adopted child so an adopted child is always treated as your own child an adopt child includes a child lawfully placed with you for legal adoption the dependent to find out if someone is your dependent see who qualifies as a dependent later we'll get into dependence shortly and tip are the dependence you claim are those you list by name and social security number in the dependent section will be the top of the form 1040 exception to time lived with you so we've got the similar kind of exception here temporary absences by you or the child first for special circumstances such as school vacation business medical care military and so on similar rule we saw before a child is considered to have lived with you for all 2022 if the child was born or died in 2022 and your home was the child's home for the entire time the child was alive similarly if you adopted the child in 2022 or the child was lawfully placed with you for legal adoption by you in 2022 the child is considered to have lived with you for all of 2022 if your main home was this child's main home for the entire time since the child was adopted or placed with you in 2022 keeping up a home so once again if you want to go into the diving detail of keeping up a home then you can take a look at publication 501 irs.gov irs.gov the irs website