Filing status.

In plain English

Your filing status is decided mainly by your marital and household situation on the last day of the tax year. There are five: Single; Married Filing Jointly; Married Filing Separately; Head of Household; and Qualifying Surviving Spouse. It is not a cosmetic label. It sets the size of your standard deduction, the income thresholds for every tax bracket, and whether you qualify for or phase out of many credits and deductions. Head of Household, the status most often missed, is for an unmarried person who pays more than half the cost of keeping up a home for a qualifying person such as a child or a dependent parent; it carries a larger standard deduction and wider brackets than Single. Married couples choose Jointly or Separately each year, and Jointly is usually, though not always, the lower-tax choice.

01Why it matters

Two people with the exact same income can owe very different amounts of tax purely because of filing status, and choosing the wrong one, or missing Head of Household eligibility, is a common and costly filing error.

02The math, step by step

An unmarried parent supporting a child in their home files as Head of Household instead of Single. The larger standard deduction and wider brackets lower the tax on the same income, and the status also changes how credits like the EITC are figured.

03What this is NOT

04Receipts

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