This whole area of 'can' someone be claimed as a dependent and 'have' they been claimed seems overly confusing to me. Experts here are unanimous in saying if a child can be claimed as a dependent then the box on the child's 1040 that says "Someone can claim: You as a dependent" must be checked even if no one claims the child.
Now what about MD? MD says the child's filing status must be the same as the 1040. But on the 1040 the filing status is 'Single'. There are two choices for single on the MD 502- box 1 single, and box 6 dependent taxpayer. However box 1 says "if you can be claimed on another person's tax return use Filing Status 6". But if on the child's return box 6 is checked they can't have an exemption, which significantly raises their tax
I would naively assume if the parent doesn't claim on federal (losing $500) or MD (in my case losing nothing) then the child should be able to check box 1 and get the exemption. I also don't know how to get a definitive answer to this.
