$5.00 Income Threshold for Married Filing Separate?

I am in a facebook group and someone asked how to file because they had interest of $6.00 and no other income.  Of course people said no need to file if income is only $6.00, but the poster pointed out they did IRS online test and it said they needed to file.  So it looks like if you make over $5.00 and file as married filing separate you now need to file.  I did the online test and got this same result, but I can't find the IRS publication.  Was this always the case and I just missed it? I am self employed so I had to file last year because of income being over $400.  But it's still good to know if the threshold has been drastically lowered.  Anyone that can confirm?

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-dft/i1040gi--dft.pdf

Page 10.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-dft/i1040gi--dft.pdf

Page 10.

Thank you. Well...that sucks.

Thank you. Well...that sucks.

+1

That certainly seems unfair to those filing as Married Filing Separately. I wonder what the rationale, if any, is for that.

Karen, over at Let's Fix the Australia/US Tax Treaty!, has suggested (in her opinion) it was collateral damage from the TCJA possibly linked to the elimination of the personal exemption while increasing the standard deduction.

http://fixthetaxtreaty.org/2018/12/19/tcja-and-us-expats/

It's too bad the Isaac Brock Society has been sabotaged - there are some interesting discussions there, such as the above link.

It's not uncommon to find IRS instructions and publications that contradict one another, but here we go again.

Subject: generally, the filing requirements (threshold) for someone filing MFS (married filing separate).

According to:

2018 1040 instructions, page 10, MFS is $5
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf

2018 Publication 17, Tax Guide for Individuals, page 6, MFS is $5
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf

2018 Publication 501, Filing Information, page 2, MFS is $5
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p501.pdf

2018 Publication 54, Tax Guide for US Citizens Resident Abroad, page 3, MFS is $12,000
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p54.pdf

Hmmmmmm..............

For non-resident aliens the threshold for 2018 is any US income larger than $0 (it was $4,050 for 2017): https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040nr.pdf

A $5 threshold would be nice!