Molly and steve are married and live in texas. molly earns a salary of $50,000 and steve owns a rental property that gives him $35,000 of income. if they filed separate tax returns, what amount of income would steve report?

Married couples can file taxes jointly or separately. Both have their advantages and disadvantages but generally, for spouses earning more or less the same amount of money, especially if both are high-income earners, filing separately might allow them to pay less tax as filing jointly would probably make their combined income reach a higher tax bracket. 

For this problem, calculating the income that Steve would have to report would only involve averaging his and Molly's income to give, 

= ($50,000 + $35,000)/2 
= $42,500

What do you mean by that?