joint return, order of names, husband deceased

When I prepared my mom's tax return for the year my dad died, I listed my dad first. Why rock the boat?

You sent the return in by boat???

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

I recommend the exact opposite (and got this idea in years past from tax preparers more experienced than me).

On the last MFJ return (2009 in this example), you should put the surviving spouse first on the return. This will provide both you and the IRS continuity for next year.

They will get the message that one spouse is deceased, regardless of what you do, so the boat has already been rocked. Now help to steady it.

-Mark Bole

I have always used Mark's approach, listing the surviving spouse first on the last joint return. Well, always since IRS stopped labeling the first "husband" and the second "wife." I've always done it primarilly to get the surviving spouse's SSN on record as the controlling SSN.

More important is to make sure that any payors who'll be issuing

1099's know that a new SSN is in order. If the 1099's are issued for 2010 in the deceased husbands SSN that does more than anything else to help prompt a letter from the IRS when no 2010 return is filed for him.

Phil Marti VITA/TCE Volunteer

Ok, so now we have one for rocking the boat, one for not, and Stuart, who abstains. Come on Stu, chime in. You've given me good advice before! Do you think it matters?

jo

I advise on tax matters, but I don't do returns. So I'm not the best person to adivse on this.

My only observation is that if it has worked for Stan when the deceased spouse was put first and it worked for Mark when it wasn't, it probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference one way or the other.

Is it a headache to issue a nominee 1099 under the SSN of the deceased spouse in that situation?

It was probably a balance-due return, so there was no hurry. ;-)

Having the surviving spouse listed first is no problem; make sure the SSN of that person is also listed first.

The deceased spouse can be listed second with the SSN listed second.

Only two potential wrinkles in this process, if any ES payments were sent in under the now deceased taxpayers SSN, these payments should automatically transfer over the filing party tax account, but there have been RARE instances of the automatic transfer failing, causing a BAL DUE Letter & then intervention by the TP or the TP's POA to straighten out the issue.

Another reason why Surnames & SSN's need to match in the Social Security Database, it's used to validate SSN & Name combinations at IRS.

Depends on your definition of "headache."

We assume the final 1040 is going to be issued so for each type of income (dividends, interest, etc) it takes a couple of more lines on a schedule.

And filing an original Red version of a form 1099 for each recipient and type of income and an original Red version of the Form 1096 transmittal cover letter.

If you've never done that before it can take a while to do.

In Ohio we quickly learn that IRS has no inkling of how to associate the spouse's SSN on a jointly filed 1040ES with the spouse. Especially annoying when filing MFS and allocating some of the jointly paid estimate to the spouse.

So if jointly filed estimates were made, the first named person ("Taxpayer") on the estimate should be the first named person on the

1040.

Thanks everyone for the pros and cons. I doubt it matters in this case; it's an extremely basic form: the couple barely earned anything besides social security last year and there are no 1099s or ES payments. They were truly impoverished. Of course the names and SSNs should match, no matter which order they are placed.

jo