Alexandria, VA

Form 8962 when filing Married Filing Separately (MFS)

If your health insurance was obtained through the government exchange and you estimated your household income was between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line, then you got help in paying your insurance premium from the government. The Advance Payment of the Premium Tax Credit (APPTC) went right to the insurance company and you never saw that money, but you did get the benefit.

So now at the end of the year comes the time of settling up. For example if you said your were earning $XX dollars and the government advanced the health premiums based on that situation, and then it turns out your made $XXX + for the year, the IRS want some of the money back. Of course if you made more that the 400%, then the IRS wants all of it back. Or it can work the other way, if when you signed up for the Exchange you said $XXX was going to earned and you earned less, then the IRS is going to give you a credit.

You will be getting a 1095-A from the IRS. And in column C is the APPTC. This is the money the government sent to the insurance company to help pay your premium.

This is good except what happens if you decided to file a MFS tax return.

You don’t get the Premium Credit if you file MFS,  unless you meet the following exception.

1. You can file MFS if you were a victim of domestic abuse or

2.  your spouse abandoned you.
What happens when you were planing on filing Jointly and then events happen.

So let’s take an example.

When your family applied for the credit you were intending to file Married filing Jointly, but maybe circumstances change and your spouse wants a divorce, then one of the spouses may be able to filed Head of Household (HOH) living apart or Single living apart. The spouse filing HOH or Single is eligible for the premium tax credit.

So for example, maybe one spouse moved out of the house and took the child, and now qualifies for HOH. Then the remaining spouse is in the MFS category and barred from the Premium Tax Credit.

Let’s take another example. The family is living together, but the husband is a general contractor and his wife is concerned about the tax position taken on his Schedule C Sole Proprietorship. The wife does not want to be involved with a Joint tax return because of questionable deductions.

At then end of the year the 1095-A arrives, and it has your social security number and lists the covered individuals as you and your spouse and the 2 children. And in our example your spouse took both children as dependents.

You are filing MFS and are looking at the form 8962. You know you are not entitled to any credit and will have to repay your portion of the credit.

But how much and how to fill out the form?

You have to mark under Part II line 9 the YES box.

Next go to Part IV and the SS of the OTHER taxpayer – yes your spouse.

Now how much to included?
Going back to the instructions for Line 9, it talks about Your tax family and a Second tax family (your spouse and the 2 kids). In our example, we meet both conditions and so we would go to TABLE 3 of the instructions and follow the Allocation of Policy Amount.
TABLE 3 has 3 options

A. Divorced or legally separated.

B. Married at the end of the year and filing MFS

C. No Advanced payment was paid for the policy.

So our taxpayer is B.

Now we have to go to Allocation Situation 2.

If you find the Allocation Situation 2 it says 50% is to be reported on Part IV.
Then if you look at page 5 of the instructions, it tells you have to report 50% of the Advanced Premium Credit which confirms what the Allocation Situation 2 says also.

Then go part IV and put down 50%.

This is counter to what you might conclude that the husband filing MFS would report 25% and the wife with the 2 children would report 75%.

So for our example if the Advance Payment of Premium Credit reported on 1095-A- line 32 column C was 10,000, our MFS taxpayer would have to report 5,000 on line 46 of  the general contractor’s 1040.