Should I File My Taxes Jointly? What It Means and What It Can Get You

The 2025 tax season wraps up in just about two weeks, but plenty of you might not have had the time file yet. While this can happen to the best of us, the clock is ticking and you have a lot of decisions to make between now and Tax Day, including which filing status to use. You can file as an individual or you might opt to file jointly if you're eligible. But what will that actually mean for you?

Joint filing is widespread among married taxpayers, with an estimated 95% of couples choosing that option when filing their taxes each year. Even as fewer Americans are getting married 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 have 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 W-2 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 both people liable for the taxes on 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 are not eligible.

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 during the tax year can file jointly, but only if they haven't remarried.

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 have 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 themselves. 

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.