Choosing your filing status is among the most important decisions you can make come tax season, with joint filing being a popular choice with a lot of taxpayers for one reason or another.
Joint filing is widespread among married taxpayers, with an estimated 95% of those couples opting for that choice when filing their taxes each year. Even as fewer and fewer Americans are getting married these days compared to past decades, a 2017 Pew Research study found that joint filers still pay a majority of the income taxes in the US.
If you’ve got questions about joint filing and what it all means, read on for all the details, for more tax coverage, find out everything you need to know about W2 forms and see how income brackets have changed in 2025.
What is joint filing?
Joint filing, also referred to as “married filing jointly,” is a tax option that combines the incomes of a married couple into one tax return. This makes each person in the couple liable for all of that income.
Who is eligible for joint filing?
Joint filing can be done by any couple that is legally married and when both of them consent to filing that way. Non-married couples in long-term relationships need not apply.
A few eligibility wrinkles worth knowing about: a couple that is no longer living together but hasn’t legally separated can still file jointly; also, someone whose spouse died at some point during the tax year can file jointly, but only if they haven’t remarried yet.
What does joint filing get you?
The main draw of joint filing for a lot of married couples is the lowered tax rate. Despite having a higher combined income, joint filers generally have lower tax rates than single filers, so in most cases it saves both of them some money. Joint filing status also allows you to combine your individual standard deductions.
Are there any drawbacks to joint filing?
Joint filing can come with some drawbacks, particularly if one spouse makes a lot less than the other. If that difference is big enough, combining incomes might result in the lower-earning spouse getting taxed at a higher rate than they would have by themself.
Joint filing might cause some couples to exceed the income limit for claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, or cause them to get less money from the Child Tax Credit.
For more, see how natural disasters have impacted this year’s tax deadlines.