Married, Both Residents, and IBR

[Green Grass]

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Anyone out there in this situation: Married, both are residents, filed taxes as married filing jointly, and are currently enrolled in IBR?

I'm wondering what your payments are like on IBR? I understand a certain percentage of your one IBR payment should go to your loans and the rest should go to your spouse's loans. In reality, does this happen smoothly?

Any insight would be beneficial! Thanks.

 

[dinosims]

I'm in a similar situation - wife is a SLP with student loans, and I'm starting residency with (many more) student loans. Basically what we did was submit documentation of both our outstanding loans and our most recent tax return, which was filed jointly. An IBR payment was calculated using our AGI and family size. Then, the payment was proportionally divided between the two of us, based on the percentage of student loan debt as compared to our combined debt. In reality, it worked pretty well. Sent in the documentation when we renewed IBR for the year, and was processed correctly without any issue.

For your example, if AGI is ~90k (estimated from 2 salaries of ~$50k, minus whatever above the line deductions you have), don't live in HI/AK, and family size of 2 (no kids), your IBR payment would be $841.31 per month (taking AGI-150% of poverty level, multiplying by 0.15, then dividing by 12). If your student loan debt is equal to your spouse's, then each of your individual payments would be $420.66.