Getting married and concerned about tax implications due to my back taxes and student loans.Should we file jointly or separately? How can I find an itemized account of past IRS tax refunds? Is student loan forgiveness a possibility?Will my wife's return be withheld if I owe back taxes?

 It's really hard to say what would be the best scenario without knowing what state they are in and what their income and tax withholding is like. CA I believe has the strictest laws about debts of one spouse - basically since a tax refund is community property, and all community property can be seized to pay the premarital debt of one spouse, it doesn't help to file Injured spouse in CA unless they had a prenup addressing premarital debts.

Otherwise, the best thing if you don't want your wife's refund to go towards your old tax debt is to file separately. There are some tax benefits you lose by filing separately, but if you don't have children and aren't using the student loan interest deduction then you probably aren't losing out on much. Neither of you will be eligible to make any IRA contributions if you file separately and have more than $10k income. You also won't qualify for Earned Income Credit by filing separately.

You could file jointly and your wife can request Injured spouse relief by filing form 8379, but that adds several additional weeks to processing time for the refund. It also doesn't work in certain community property states, like CA, unless you have a prenup.

About Form 8379, Injured Spouse Allocation

One thing you both can do is try to set your withholding to get your refund amount as close to zero as possible, or even owe a little bit on your tax return. If you don't have kids and don't qualify for Earned Income Credit, that should be pretty easy; you probably have more control over the size of your refund than you think. If you don't have a refund then it's fine to file jointly, because there won't be anything to take.

Right now you can use the Tax Withholding Estimator and run the different scenarios (two MFS returns vs one MFJ return for 2023:

Tax Withholding Estimator

Depending on your income you can also try changing your withholding now to minimize the refund amount that could be taken. If you do, be sure to check again in February so you don't have too little withholding and wind up owing a lot of money. It's a good idea to check a couple of times a year, like February and August.

For your second question, you can check your IRS Account transcripts online for the last ten years:

Get Your Tax Record

You'll want to check each year and look for codes 826 and 898.

826 is the code for when your refund is taken for tax debt; you would see the transaction say "Credit transferred out to 1040 201912" for any refund applied to the 2019 return.

898 is the code for when your refund is taken for another government debt, like defaulted student loans. The transaction doesn't give details; it just says "Refund applied to non-IRS debt" and the amount.

Once you have an online IRS account you should be able to see that balance. If you want to check on the defaulted loan balance, call the Treasury Offset Program automated number: 800-304-3107

I can't tell you if you qualify for forgiveness for your student loan, but you might be able to rehabilitate the loans if you can make a small monthly payment for the next year.

Getting Out of Default

By the way you probably will need to set up a payment plan with IRS soon; they are supposed to start pursuing people with tax debt who haven't set up some kind of payment arrangement. You can set up a payment plan online:

Apply Online for a Payment Plan

If you can't afford the lowest monthly payment on the website then call IRS collections. It is possible to get lower monthly payments depending on your financial situation.