When couples split up, it’s still common for one party to make support payments to the other. Sometimes this continues until the death of the party receiving support; sometimes it ends after a set term of years. Whatever the alimony arrangement, the tax treatment of the payments from the view of both parties becomes important. IRS statistics show that deductions for alimony payments by taxpayers in 2016 (the most recent year for statistics) totaled more than $12 billion. But as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), new tax rules apply to divorce instructions executed after 2018 and may change planning for divorcing couples going forward.

Tax Treatment for Pre-2019 Divorces

Spouses who divorced prior to 2019 do not have any new tax treatment for alimony payments that continue to be made. Assuming that payments meet the Tax Code definition of alimony (Code §71), they are fully deductible by the payer-spouse as an adjustment to gross income (no itemizing is required) and fully taxable to the recipient-spouse. This is so even if a pre-2019 divorce instrument is modified after 2018, as long as it does not specifically say that TCJA rules explained below apply.