FLIGHT SCHOOL QUALIFYING DEPENDENT?

[Ikaika1402]

My 23 year old Son graduated with a 4 year degree in July 2020.  He is now attending a Flight School full time, and is not working.  When I began to do my taxes using TurboTax for 2021, and imported my personal info from TurboTax 2020, the software again listed him as a Qualifying Dependent, and automatically listed my tax filing status as the previous year, HOH.  I am divorced, and per the decree, my Son is awarded to me for "Tax Reporting Purposes".  Is this correct, or is he NOT a Qualifying Dependent, and I'm supposed to file as Single?

[ColeenD3]

Is flight school an eligible institution? If so, he meets the age test.

Head of Household

You may be able to file as head of household if you meet all the following requirements.

1. You are unmarried or considered unmarried on the last day of the year. See Marital Status , earlier, and Considered Unmarried , later.
2. You paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for the year.
3. A qualifying person lived with you in the home for more than half the year (except for temporary absences, such as school). However, if the qualifying person is your dependent parent, he or she doesn't have to live with you. See Special rule for parent , later, under Qualifying Person.

Qualifying Person

See Table 4 to see who is a qualifying person.

Qualifying child

In addition to the qualifications above, to claim an exemption for your child, you must be able to answer "yes" to all of the following questions.

• Are they related to you? The child can be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, stepbrother, stepsister, adopted child, or an offspring of any of them.
• 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.
• Do you financially support them? Your child may have a job, but that job cannot provide more than half of her support.
• 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.

[Hal_Al]

Yes, you qualify for HOH.  And your son qualifies as your dependent. 

There are two types of dependents, "Qualifying Children"(QC) and Other ("Qualifying Relative" in IRS parlance even though they don't have to actually be related). There is no income limit for a QC but there is an age limit, student status, a relationship test and residence test.

A child of a taxpayer can still be a “Qualifying Child” (QC) dependent, regardless of his/her income, if:

1. He is under age 19, or under 24 if a full time student* for parts of at least 5 calendar months of the year, or is totally & permanently disabled.  
2. He did not provide more than 1/2 his own support. Scholarships are excluded from the support calculation
3. He lived with the parent (including temporary absences such as away at school) for more than half the year

*For the dependent test, the school does not have to be an eligible institution. It does need to be an eligible institution to claim the tuition credit. 

From Pub 501: 

School defined. A school can be an elementary school, junior or senior high school, college, university, or technical, trade, or mechanical school. However, an on-the-job training course, correspondence school, or school offering courses only through the Internet doesn't count as a school.