Do I Have to File Taxes? Income Thresholds and Penalties

You have to file a federal income tax return for 2025 if your gross income reached the threshold for your filing status and age, or if one of several special situations applies regardless of income. For a single person under 65, that income threshold is $15,750; for a married couple filing jointly where both are under 65, it’s $31,500. But income is only half the picture. Self-employment earnings of $400 or more, advance Premium Tax Credits from the health insurance marketplace, and certain other triggers require you to file even if you earned very little.¹

Income Thresholds for the 2025 Tax Year

The IRS sets filing thresholds equal to the standard deduction for each filing status, with an extra bump for taxpayers who are 65 or older by the end of the year. If your gross income is below the number for your situation, you generally aren’t required to file. For returns due April 15, 2026:

Single, under 65: $15,750
Single, 65 or older: $17,550
Head of Household, under 65: $23,625
Head of Household, 65 or older: $25,625
Married Filing Jointly, both under 65: $31,500
Married Filing Jointly, one spouse 65 or older: $33,100
Married Filing Jointly, both 65 or older: $34,700
Qualifying Surviving Spouse, under 65: $31,500
Qualifying Surviving Spouse, 65 or older: $33,100
Married Filing Separately, any age: $5

The $5 figure for Married Filing Separately is not a typo. That status effectively requires both spouses to file whenever one does, which is one of the planning quirks of filing separately.¹

Your filing status is set by your situation on December 31 of the tax year. Head of Household is available if you’re unmarried (or considered unmarried) and pay more than half the cost of keeping up a home for a qualifying dependent. Qualifying Surviving Spouse is available for up to two tax years after your spouse’s death if you have a dependent child and haven’t remarried.²

The age-65 bump exists because taxpayers at that age get an additional standard deduction: $2,000 for unmarried filers and $1,600 for each spouse 65 or older on a joint return.³ A new enhanced deduction of up to $6,000 for seniors starting in 2025 can reduce your tax if you file, but it doesn’t change the thresholds above.⁴

Different Rules If Someone Can Claim You as a Dependent

If a parent or someone else can claim you as a dependent, your filing thresholds are lower, and they split based on the type of income you have. For a single dependent under 65 who isn’t blind, you must file for 2025 if any of the following is true:

Your unearned income (interest, dividends, capital gains) was more than $1,350.
Your earned income (wages, salary, tips) was more than $15,750.
Your gross income was more than the larger of $1,350, or your earned income (up to $15,350) plus $400.

The low unearned-income threshold catches a lot of teenagers and students. A dependent with $1,400 in dividend income from a custodial account has to file, even though that figure is nowhere near the $15,750 threshold for a non-dependent.²

When You Must File Regardless of Income

The income thresholds don’t apply at all if one of these situations is in play. This is where people most often get tripped up.

Self-Employment Earnings of $400 or More

Hit $400 in net self-employment income and you have to file. This covers freelance work, gig platforms, side businesses, and anything else where you got a 1099-NEC or were paid as an independent contractor. The filing requirement exists because self-employed workers owe Social Security and Medicare taxes on those earnings, and the return is how you report and pay them.⁵

Advance Premium Tax Credits

If you received advance payments of the Premium Tax Credit to lower your monthly health insurance premium through the marketplace, you must file a return and attach Form 8962 to reconcile the advance amount against your actual income for the year. This is required even if your income is otherwise below the filing threshold. Skipping the return costs you eligibility for advance credits in future years, meaning you’d face the full monthly premium.⁶

Special Taxes

You must file if you owe the Alternative Minimum Tax,⁷ or if you owe recapture tax from, for example, a prior first-time homebuyer credit on a home you sold early, or a Roth conversion paid over several years.

Additional Medicare Tax

The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax kicks in on wages, compensation, or self-employment income above $200,000 for most filers, $250,000 for married couples filing jointly, and $125,000 for married filing separately. Employers start withholding at $200,000 for every employee no matter what their filing status is, so a dual-income married couple may need to file to settle up the difference.⁸

HSA or Archer MSA Distributions

Taking money out of a Health Savings Account during the year means filing Form 8889 with your return (Form 8853 for an Archer MSA). This holds even when you used every dollar for qualified medical expenses and owe no extra tax.⁹

If You’re Living on Social Security

Many retirees whose main income is Social Security don’t have to file, because benefits often stay out of gross income. None of your Social Security counts toward the filing threshold if half your benefits plus all other income (including tax-exempt interest) is $25,000 or less for a single filer, or $32,000 or less for a married couple filing jointly. Above those amounts, between 50% and 85% of your benefits become taxable and start counting toward the threshold.¹⁰

One trap: if you’re married filing separately and lived with your spouse at any point during the year, the base amount drops to $0, so some of your benefits are always taxable.

Reasons to File Even When You Aren’t Required To

Filing is often worth it when you don’t technically have to. The clearest reason is a refund of tax that was already withheld. If your employer took federal income tax out of your paychecks and your income ended up below the filing threshold, the only way to get that money back is to file and claim it.

Refundable credits can pay out beyond what you had withheld, meaning you can walk away with more than zero even if your tax bill is zero:

The Earned Income Tax Credit is worth up to $8,046 for a family with three or more qualifying children for the 2025 tax year, and workers without children can receive up to $649.
The Child Tax Credit is worth up to $2,200 per qualifying child, with up to $1,700 of that refundable through the Additional Child Tax Credit.
The American Opportunity Tax Credit for education is refundable up to $1,000.

The IRS estimates many eligible taxpayers miss these credits by not filing.¹¹ For a working family at a low income, the EITC alone can run into thousands of dollars.¹²

Penalties If You Were Required to File and Didn’t

The failure-to-file penalty is 5% of your unpaid tax for each month or part of a month the return is late, capped at 25%. A separate failure-to-pay penalty runs 0.5% per month, also capped at 25%. When both apply in the same month, the filing penalty is reduced by the payment penalty amount, so you’re hit with 5% that month rather than 5.5%.¹³¹⁴

Once your return is more than 60 days late, the minimum failure-to-file penalty becomes the smaller of $525 or 100% of the unpaid tax. A small tax balance can produce an outsized penalty if you let the clock run.¹³

If you’re owed a refund, there’s no late-filing penalty because the penalty is calculated on unpaid tax. The deadline that matters in that case is a different one: you generally have three years from the original due date to file and claim the refund. Miss that window and the money stays with the Treasury.¹⁵

State Taxes Are Separate

Clearing the federal filing requirement doesn’t clear a state one. Most states have their own income tax with their own thresholds, and those thresholds are often lower than the federal numbers. Nine states don’t have an individual income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming (Washington does tax certain capital gains above $270,000). Everywhere else, check your state revenue department’s filing rules. Some states expect a return after even a single day of work within their borders.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Check if You Need to File a Tax Return
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 501 – Dependents, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information
3
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 551 – Standard Deduction
4
Internal Revenue Service. Check Your Eligibility for the New Enhanced Deduction for Seniors
5
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 554 – Self-Employment Tax
6
Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers on the Premium Tax Credit
7
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 556 – Alternative Minimum Tax
8
Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers for the Additional Medicare Tax
9
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 969 – Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans
10
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 554 – Tax Guide for Seniors
11
Internal Revenue Service. Refundable Tax Credits
12
Internal Revenue Service. Earned Income and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Tables
13
Internal Revenue Service. Failure to File Penalty
14
Internal Revenue Service. Collection Procedural Questions 3
15
Internal Revenue Service. Time You Can Claim a Credit or Refund