No, you may not file as head of household because you weren't legally separated from your spouse or considered unmarried at the end of the tax year. To be considered unmarried at the end of a tax year, your spouse may not be a member of your household during the last 6 months of the tax year and you must meet other requirements. Your filing status for the year will be either married filing separately or married filing jointly.
See What is My Filing Status? and Publication 501, Dependents, Standard Deduction and Filing Information for information about filing status.
Additional Information:
Subcategory:Filing Status Category:Filing Requirements, Status, Dependents If the parents of a year-old child never married but live together with the child for the tax year, and both contribute to the cost of maintaining the household for the child and themselves, may they both file as head of household?Answer:No, only one parent may claim the child as a qualifying child to file as head of household.
Additional Information:
Subcategory:Filing Status Category:Filing Requirements, Status, Dependents To qualify for head of household filing status, do I have to claim my child as a dependent?Answer:Generally, to qualify for head of household filing status, you must have a qualifying child or a dependent. However, a custodial parent may be eligible to claim head of household filing status based on a child even if he or she released a claim to exemption for the child. See Noncustodial parent is claiming our child as a dependent; do I still qualify as head of household? Additional Information:
Subcategory:Filing Status Category:Filing Requirements, Status, Dependents I am divorced with one child. This year my ex-spouse, who is the noncustodial parent, is entitled to claim our child as a dependent. May I still qualify as head of household?Answer:You may still qualify for head of household filing status even though you aren't entitled to claim your child as a dependent, if you meet the following requirements: If you are a U.S. citizen married to an individual who is neither a citizen nor a resident of the United States within the meaning of Internal Revenue Code section 7701(b)(4), also referred to as a “nonresident”, you may qualify to use the head of household tax rates. You are considered unmarried for head of household purposes if your spouse was a nonresident at any time during the year and you do not choose to treat your nonresident spouse as a resident. However, your spouse is not a qualifying person for head of household purposes. You must have another qualifying person and meet the other tests to be eligible to file as a head of household. It may be advantageous to choose to treat your nonresident spouse as a U.S. resident and file a joint income tax return. Once you make the choice, however, you must include the worldwide income of both yourself and your spouse on your joint income tax return. Although your nonresident spouse cannot qualify you as a head of household, you can qualify if 1 or 2 applies:
If you qualify as head of household, you can use the head of household column in the Tax Table or the head of household Tax Rate Schedule. |