Can You Change Your Filing Status On An Amended Return

How to Change Your Tax Filing Status

Updated for Tax Year 2021 • January nineteen, 2022 03:31 PM

OVERVIEW

Choosing your filing condition is an important showtime pace for preparing your federal taxation return. Your filing status determines your standard deduction, tax rates and brackets.

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Overview

The initial step in preparing your federal income tax return is to determine your eligibility for the various filing statuses. Mostly, you can choose between:

single,
head of household,
married filing jointly and separately or
every bit a qualified widower.

Your filing status is very important because it determines the corporeality of your standard deduction and the tax rates and brackets your income is subject to. Y'all tin can modify your revenue enhancement filing condition each year every bit long as you satisfy its specific eligibility requirements.

Step i—Evaluate the requirements of each revenue enhancement filing status

The first thing y'all need to do is determine which tax filing status you are eligible for. The instructions to your federal income revenue enhancement return lists the requirements for each condition, but if you use revenue enhancement software, such as TurboTax, the program will make up one's mind the best status for yous based on answers you lot provide to questions.

Step 2—Qualify for head of household?

If you are unmarried, meet if you qualify as caput of household. Filing as caput of household rather than single allows you to claim a much larger standard deduction. All the same, this revenue enhancement filing status requires that you lot pay more than half the costs to maintain your home and to accept a dependent who lives with y'all for more than half the taxation year.

Married taxpayers are generally ineligible to merits this filing condition. If you are married, you lot must determine whether to file jointly or separately. Unless you have extenuating circumstances, yous should file a joint render with your spouse to take advantage of the larger standard deduction and lower tax rates.

Step 3—Evaluate eligibility

Evaluate whether you are eligible for a dissimilar filing status in one of the last 3 years. If you discover that you qualify for a dissimilar filing status than you ordinarily claim on your returns, you lot should evaluate the filing condition requirements for each of the final three years to see if you can meliorate your tax return for a amend tax outcome.

Mostly, the requirements are like each year for the same filing condition, but you should always check the instructions that employ for the specific revenue enhancement yr you are taking another look at. When you utilize TurboTax, yous can easily access forms and instructions from the prior year.

Step 4—Amending your revenue enhancement returns

The IRS allows you to modify your filing status for a taxation render you've already filed if no more than than iii years have passed since the original tax filing deadline. For instance, if y'all filed as a unmarried taxpayer terminal yr, but now realize y'all qualified for head of household, yous need to brand the change on an IRS Course 1040-X.

When yous change this status, you not only obtain a larger standard deduction, but your income for that year is subject to lower taxation rates. Making this change volition likely consequence in a tax refund, but yous cannot receive information technology until you lot file the amended return.

Y'all can better a return to change from married filing carve up to married filing joint just non from married filing joint to married filing separate unless you practise so prior to the original filing deadline without extensions. And then, once you file a articulation return yous can non change it to a separate return if the filing deadline has already passed.

Tips

When assessing whether you are eligible to amend a tax render to change your filing condition, the 3-year period begins on the taxation filing borderline for the year of the render even if you lot file before this engagement. However, if yous filed after the tax filing deadline for that year, the menstruation begins on the date you lot actually file.

Call back, with TurboTax, we'll ask you lot simple questions about your life and help you fill out all the right revenue enhancement forms. With TurboTax you can be confident your taxes are done right, from simple to complex revenue enhancement returns, no thing what your situation.