Montana Individual Income Tax Filing Statuses


This article is for tax years before January 1, 2024. Beginning with tax years after December 31, 2023, Montana taxpayers must use the same filing status used for federal purposes.

Your filing status is your marital status for tax filing purposes. Your standard deductions, filing requirements, and other aspects of your tax return may change based on your filing status.

Montana law doesn’t require you to claim the same filing status that you claimed on your federal tax return. For example, if you are married and you filed your federal income tax return jointly, you and your spouse have the option to file your Montana tax return either jointly or separately.

Montana has six filing statuses:

Choose your status based on which fits you best on December 31 of the tax year.

Selecting a Filing Status

Single

You can claim this filing status if on December 31, you were:

Married Filing Jointly

You and your spouse may file a joint return if you were married as of December 31, even if:

Married Filing Separately

If you and your spouse both have income, you can file your Montana income tax returns separately, even if you filed your federal  form jointly.

If you choose to file separately, you and your spouse must report your adjusted gross income separately. You can't assign income between the two of you.

On The Same Form

You may file separately on the same form unless one spouse is a Montana resident, and the other is not.

Although you're submitting returns on the same form, you are submitting two separate tax returns. If both taxpayers are entitled to refunds, we will issue two separate checks or direct deposits. If both spouses owe additional tax, penalties, or interest, we will mail separate Statements of Account.

Please Note: If you file separately on the same form, we assume you want us to apply your refund to your spouse's amount owed. Please file on separate forms if you do not want your refund offset against your spouse's taxes.

If we discover math or other computational errors when processing the form, we will adjust it to correct the error. This might cause your refund to be applied to your spouse's increased tax. To avoid this, file your returns on separate forms.

On Separate Forms

You may use this status if:

Spouse Not Filing

You can use this filing status if:

When you use this status, you can't claim your spouse as a dependent on your return.

Head of Household

You can file as head of household if you qualify on your federal income tax return. See the IRS guidelines for more information.