Treatment of married individuals filing jointly
Authority: IC 6-8.1-3-3
Affected: IC 6-3.6
Sec. 5. (a) Each individual spouse is treated separately under local income tax (LIT). Accordingly, each spouse must determine his or her respective county of residence and county of principal place of business or employment as of January 1 and will compute his or her respective county tax due, based on his or her separate adjusted gross income. (1) However, for purposes of calculating LIT on a return of a married couple filing jointly, if one (1) spouse has a negative adjusted gross income and the other spouse has a positive adjusted gross income, the negative income may be used to offset the other spouse's positive income. (2) If one (1) spouse uses the other spouse's negative adjusted gross income to offset the spouse's positive adjusted gross income, the other spouse shall report zero (0) adjusted gross income and shall not be permitted to carry forward any negative adjusted gross income used by the spouse to succeeding tax years.