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April 22, 2020
Question

Injured Spouse

  • April 22, 2020
  • 1 reply
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I realized after I had filed our 2019 taxes that I also needed to file the Injured Spouse form 8379. I thought I followed the directions here on Turbo tax correctly by filing an amended return and filling out the questions regarding injured spouse as instructed, however, I never actually printed the form 8379 nor did I mail it in with my amended return because that was not explicitly part of the instructions. My question is do I need to mail that in separately or was that part of what I filled in and printed off here on Turbotax? 

1 reply

CatinaT1
April 22, 2020

Did you change anything on your return?  Why were you amending?  You did not need to amend to add the injured spouse form.  If you have not mailed in Form 8379 you will need to do this.

 

Form 8379 lets you (the "injured spouse") get back your portion of a jointly-filed refund if it's seized or offset to pay your spouse's debt.

You must file jointly to use this form. Filing an 8379 will delay your federal refund by up to 14 weeks.

To file this form in TurboTax:

  1. Open or continue your return.
  2. In the search box, enter injured spouse and then select the Jump to link in the search results.
  3. Answer Yes to Do you want to claim innocent or injured spouse relief? and carefully follow the onscreen instructions.

Note: Pay close attention to the screens, as some of them apply to innocent spouse relief, which is different. Leave those questions blank if you only want to claim injured spouse relief.

 

This article will guide you through the process.

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April 22, 2020

Right there in the instructions you just sent me it says to amend your return if you follow "What if I've already filed..." That's why I amended my return, per those instructions! It had me go in and amend and asked me if i wanted to file Injured Spouse, then fill in a few more questions, print a stack of paperwork and mail it in. My question is, did that cover me and what i needed to do to file the form?  I'm asking because I did not see the actual form 8379 within that paperwork that I mailed in, even though I followed the instructions for filing the form per Turbotax. 

CatinaT1
April 24, 2020

I have requested a change to those instructions.  You are selecting amend so you can produce the form 8379, but that is the only thing you are mailing.

 

If you did not see the 8379 in the paperwork that printed, you did not complete the injured spouse correctly.  Review those answers in TurboTax, produce the 8379 and then mail just that form.

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