I attempted to do taxes (married, filing jointly with my spouse) on turbo-tax.

When selling your primary residence, you're eligible for a significant tax advantage: individuals can exclude up to $250,000 of capital gains from their income, and married couples filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000.

We’ve researched using a HML, but aren’t sure which would be smarter and have less impact on us financially as a newly-married couple, since personally, I wouldn’t be taking any risk or contributing to the purchase.

"Marry the property, but date the rate!"

I have a duplex that I lease out, and recently got married where my wife and I are over 150k (salaries combined).

I'm newly married, and my goal is to get a first property for rental investment. 

You can avoid taxes on $250,000 in gains if you are single and $500,000 if you are married.

*Getting married in September so any savings I have is on the back burner for that and we'll probably be starting from scratch. 

However, as the owner you still need to spend more than 50% of personal services and more than 750 hours on the real estate business on your own.Alternatively, short-term rentals are generally treated as active business income and therefore are eligible to offset w-2 income.Navigating the Real Estate Professional Rules"When measuring material participation, a married taxpayer is required to count any hours performed by his or her spouse, even if the spouse does not own an interest in the business or if no joint return is filed.32 While this rule is advantageous because it makes it more likely the taxpayer materially participates in the real property trade or business, it is a trap for the unwary in the real estate professional context, as discussed below in Step 3.""

Excess business losses are capped for single individuals at $250,000 and for married individuals at $500,000, with any surplus being suspended and carried forward.