Question

Spousal support

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 19, 2022
1 reply
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Is retroactive spousal support claimed in the current year or must the prior year tax return be recalculated

Employee

Alimony is only tax deductible to the payer (and taxable income to the recipient) if the divorce was finalized before January 1, 2019.

If your divorce was before 2019, then you deduct alimony when you actually pay it, not when it should have been paid. And the recipient reports it as taxable income when it is actually paid, not when it should have been paid.

B

Bill7312Author

Thank you

So your saying if the divorce was not finalized before January 1, 2019, then it is not deductible?

O

Opus 17

Employee

@Bill7312 wrote:

Thank you

So your saying if the divorce was not finalized before January 1, 2019, then it is not deductible?

For divorces that were finalized on or after 1/1/2019, spousal support or alimony is not deductible to the payer and is not taxable to the recipient. This was part of the 2017 tax reform law. Your attorneys should have taken this change into account when negotiating the alimony amount, since the same dollar amount of alimony is more "expensive" for the payer in divorces after that date compared to divorces before that date.

For divorces that were signed in 2018 or earlier and modified in 2019 or later, there is the option to leave alimony as deductible, or to change it to non-deductible. That would written into the modification, if that's the situation here.