My husband filed a chapter 13 bankruptcy and was told he had to give his next 3 years of tax returns to the courts..However, we file jointly does that mean the whole return or just his portion? We live in Lake Charles, La. In addition I am not on disability
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If you file jointly it would be hard to separate your part of the return from his since most if not all the schedules probably have joint info on them. Filing jointly is one tax return- so yes, it means the whole tax return.
You do have the option of filing separately. However, since you live in a community property state, you have to be very careful of how you file this way since many items of income and property are considered to belong to each of you -fifty-fifty (unless you live apart). If you file separately, half of your items of income will be shown on your spouses' separate return anyway- so, the court will have knowledge of your income and deductions. There are different rules for reporting community property if you live apart and that would keep your income and deductions more separate. Consulting a tax professional that you trust would probably be best if you want to consider filing separately.
If you want to read about this topic, IRS publication 555 explains community property. Here's a link to that and another article on this subject:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p555.pdf
http://www.ehow.com/how_9712_file-taxes-community.html
Hope this has been helpful.
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