My daughter is 17 and made about $8000 in 2016, She has filed her own taxes. Can I still claim her on our taxes as a dependent?

You can still file your dependent on your return regardless of the income amount as long as you can answer YES to the questions below which qualifies her as your dependent. The only thing is she need to have selected that she can be claimed as a dependent. Go ahead and file her as your dependent and if you have any issues with rejections this means she did not select she could be filed as a dependent. This can be fixed and we will help you if you need help with that if this becomes an issue.

• Do they meet the age requirement? Your child must be under age 19 or, if a full-time student, under age 24. There is no age limit if your child is permanently and totally disabled.
• Do they live with you? Your child must live with you for more than half the year, but several exceptions apply. Being away for school does not change the child's permanent home address and they still qualify as being in the home.
• Do you financially support them? Your child may have a job, but that job cannot provide more than half of her support. Income amount DOES NOT MATTER.
  
• Are you the only person claiming them? This requirement commonly applies to children of divorced parents. Here you must use the “tie breaker rules,” which are found in IRS Publication 501. These rules establish income, parentage and residency requirements for claiming a child.

Since she did not check she could be filed as a dependent she will need to amend her return. Amend returns must be mailed and take up to 16 weeks to process. This means that your return would need to be filed by mail because her social security number cannot be filed electronically more than once unless she selected that she could be claimed on someone else's return. I hope this helps and let us know if you need more help.

If she filed with TurboTax she can follow these steps to amend: https://ttlc.intuit.com/replies/3288565

 

Unfortunately she chose that she's not being claimed as a dependent and her tax return is already filed.  What can I do to fix this?

I will add the instructions above since it is a process.

Ok I see how to amend her tax return. But will it affect her refund that's she's getting?

She will still receive the refund but she may have been getting more back since she was not being claimed as a dependent so it gave her the exemption.... Once you make the change you will be able to see if it has an affect.

Ok I did it but didn't file yet. It totally changed her refund. She was getting $582 federal return and $12 ca state refund.  Now she will owe $176 federal and $39 Ca state. Does that sound right?