I have new clients. They got married Dec 15th 2018. The spouse earned 20,000 a year, and took a heavy amount of advanced premium tax credits during the year. The other earned about 150,000 for the year. No dependents. Clearly their joint income was in the 401% and above of the poverty level for purposes of calculating premium tax credit.
When I went to do the alternative calculation on Form 8962, it appears that instead of breaking apart the two spouse's income for the months they weren't married based on what they actually earned, they divide it exactly in half, and use that number to determine whether the person who took APTC was above the 400% threshold.
Am I understanding this correctly? Basically, since the other spouse made significantly more, the lower earning spouse gets penalized for the whole year, and now must repay the APTC taken for the whole year? Am I missing something?