<prompt> Human: Long story short, if wife filed individually, shed receive a refund of a few thousand dollars. If I filed individually, Id owe a few thousand dollars I keep fucking up my W-4 allowances because Im stupid. If we file together as married, wed receive a refund of a couple hundred dollars, which is great, but shorts her a few thousand dollars because of me. Could I just pay my wife the difference between what she would have received as a return instead of sending it to the IRS? Is that technically fair? Id rather her have it than the IRS, of course. In the meantime, I need to fix my allowances... any advice would be great. Thanks, PF!edit, title should say messes up my wifes refund, not return.  <response>: Make sure you arent making the When I put my spouses income into the tax software, our refund goes way down! mistake, as explained in this thread:In a similar way, you also cant just file as Single if you are married, so if you are comparing numbers that way, it is totally invalid, because you arent eligible to use that filing status. You can try Married Filing Separately, but it probably doesnt give you much advantage.As long as you actually are computing your taxes correctly, the IRS needs to get its money, no matter what. After that, how you want to shuffle your money between you two is a personal issue. 