Capital gain tax exemption

What is the name of your state? CA---State of community property


My husband and I are married for almost 7 years and we are filing tax jointly. My husband purchased current house for little under $90,000. When we got married, the value of the house was around $170,000. It is worth little over $500,000 right at this point. We lived in our house ever since we got married. We are planning to sell our house very soon and we are not going to use much of money from the sale of our house since we are moving into my mother's house. I'm concerned about capital gain tax. The problem is my name is not on the title. Since this is community property state, I thought I will get $250,000 capital gain tax exemption even my name is not on the title. When my husband and I got married, I didn't really care if my name was on the title. But I read IRS site regarding capital gain tax exemption and started panicking. Is my name has to be on the title for 2 years in order to get my part of $250,000 capital gain tax exemption? I hope I will get $250,000 tax exemption...

[abezon]

Technically, you have a problem. As a practical matter, if hubby puts you on the title now, the IRS will never question the sale & exclusion of gain. The sale will be reported to the IRS as a joint sale, you'll put the sale on a Sch.D & claim the exclusion, and the IRS will accept it. Frankly, the IRS probably wouldn't even catch this during an audit; they have better things to do than pay people to do title searches!

I suggest you file electronically in 2005, as electronic returns don't get looked at by actual people.