Background: Wife and I both have student loans ($200k each). She's been out of residency for 1.5 years. I just finished fellowship last June. I have refinanced my loans and will start paying aggressively on mine. They should be gone in 3-4 years. Wife qualifies for PSLF and is around 6 years away after doing IBR for the last 4 years. Both W-2 employees currently with partnership for me in 2.5 years. Wife is peds, so last year in 6 mos of fellowship + 6 mos attending salary, my gross income was more than hers due to pay differences and her access to both 403b/457b. I'll run the numbers but a rough estimate suggests that IBR payments would be significantly smaller ($1000+/mo) if we file taxes separately because the IBR payments wouldn't also account for my salary.
Question: Has anyone else done this or know of people who have filed taxes married filing separately just to lower their IBR payments?
I don't have all of our tax documents yet to know the tax difference, but I doubt we'd pay more than the annual difference in IBR payments. Obviously, there are the future unknowns with PSLF (capping it and whatnot), but I'm hedging that a little bit since we'll pay down my loans first.
Question: Has anyone else done this or know of people who have filed taxes married filing separately just to lower their IBR payments?
I don't have all of our tax documents yet to know the tax difference, but I doubt we'd pay more than the annual difference in IBR payments. Obviously, there are the future unknowns with PSLF (capping it and whatnot), but I'm hedging that a little bit since we'll pay down my loans first.
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