My wife and I are both under the IBR plan and are going to file “Married Filing Separately” this year to avoid larger monthly payments.  We did figure our “Married Filing Jointly” return, just to see how much we’d be losing out on, and it came to about a $1000.

Here’s my question: Is it possible, two or three years down the road, to ammend our return to a “Married Filing Jointly” and recoup the $1000, while still continuing to file “Married Filing Separately” for the current year (there is a 3-year window to ammend returns from separately to jointly), thus keeping our IBR payments lower?

This seems like a moral grey area, I know.  But IBR only looks at our current situation, correct?  Is there anything they could do if they found out we changed from separately to jointly on a previous return?

I’m really curious your answer.  I’ve asked a lot of people, and no one seems quite sure of the answer.

While the last couple posts were long, I think they lacked a certain understanding of the original question…

I can say that I’m unaware of any consequences from the tax side, although I assume the info would come out in any kind of audit process.

From the loan side I would consider this extremely risky.  You’d certainly get the 1000 back with no problem, but this could be one of those things where you forget about it for a year and then the DOE gets around to checking up on things and slaps a years worth of extra interest on the loan. 

I’d actually do the math on your loan.  Is it better to have cash on hand and pay more at tax time, or is it worth bigger payments (therefore faster payoff) and a tax bonus?  It’s way better to know what you are getting into than roll the dice and have it bite you.

I’d like to see what Heather would say about this as well.