Recent Posts in Taxes & Divorce Category

When the court calculates how much child support will be paid in a Florida Divorce or a Florida Paternity case, there are many factors which are taken into account.  One of these is the cost of childcare.

First, your expert Tampa Family Law Attorney will assist the court in determining how much basic child support should be paid based upon the net incomes of the parents under the Florida Child Support Guidelines.  Then the court will add the cost of health insurance for the children. 

Many people pay some sort of childcare for their children.  This will be considered in the child support calculation, but only if it is necessary to enable one parent or the other to get to work.  The next step, then, would be to add this cost to the required full child support of the children after deducting a straight 25% amount.  The reason for the deduction is that the Internal Revenue Service allows a tax credit for a portion of health insurance attributable to the children.

Once this is added to the basic child support amount, the court is closer to giving the final Florida child support amount to the parents.

Bottom line:  The mathematical child support calculation includes the cost of childcare for the children and your expert Florida Family Law lawyer can assist in this calculation.

In your Florida divorce, one spouse may receive alimony or child support from the other.  When that happens, you need to be aware of the tax consequences.  Wouldn’t it be great if we all got to take home all of the money we earn at work?  Of course we can’t because income tax is taken out.

While there are no income taxes to be paid for receipt of child support, there are income taxes to be paid on alimony.

There are many technical rules involved (after all, we are talking about the Internal Revenue Code), but basically you can count on treating monthly payments of alimony as taxable income to the receiving spouse and tax deductible to the paying spouse.  That makes a huge difference in the amount of money involved.  If you are in the twenty percent tax bracket, $1,000 per month becomes $800.  If you were planning your future based on the entire $1,000, you are in for a surprise.

It is very important to get the advice of an expert Florida divorce lawyer when there is alimony involved.

Bottom line:  Ask your Tampa divorce lawyer about the tax consequences of paying or receiving alimony.

© Copyright 2009 by Stann Givens

Benjamin Franklin said, “The only two sure things are death and taxes.”  When you are going through a divorce in Florida, you must remember that there are tax consequences to certain parts of it.

Suppose that you bought some rental property with your spouse a few years back and it looks as if you are going to get the property as part of a settlement proposal from your spouse’s expert Florida divorce lawyer.  Of course you will consider the amount of mortgage debt that is on the property when you analyze what the property is really worth to you, but you need to be aware of a hidden debt.  The amount by which the property has increased in value since its purchase will be subject to capital gains tax (currently 15%).  There will be no tax due at the time of the divorce, but when you later sell the property you will have to pay that tax.

For that reason, you may not wish to put that property in your column on the property division balance sheet.  If your spouse is not willing to factor that debt into the equation, then your expert Tampa divorce lawyer may suggest that your spouse get that property and you get something else that has no future tax burden.

Bottom line:  Your Florida divorce lawyer can help you look at all of the tax factors involved in the property division aspect of your divorce.

© Copyright 2009 by Stann Givens