@RobertB4444 OK, I'm confused. According to Table 5 in IRS publication 501, our youngest (under 24 and a full time student who did not pay for more than half her own support in 2024) is a "qualifying child". Yet on my return TT has her marked as "meets qualifying other dependent" not "child". But she earned more than $5050 in 2024. We can't claim the $500 "other dependent" credit because we converted all of our IRAs to Roth in 2024 and that pushed our income over $410,000. She filed just to get her income taxes that were withheld (federal and the state where she worked) back. She filed as a nonresident where she worked (even though she lived in that state all year except for a few weeks when she came to visit us) because she 1. Has a driver's license and is registered to vote in our state and 2. Lived in 3 different places in the second state during the year (2 different dorms and then summer housing while she was working). She filed as a resident in our state and claimed the taxes withheld by the other state (though she didn't have any tax liability in either state). She checked on her federal (and I assume on both states') return that she could be claimed as a dependent on our return, but had not been.
Now, since she is showing up as a dependent on our return and we are not eligible for the credit (why I told her to go ahead and say we're not claiming her), is she going to have to amend her return? Can I delete her from our return by editing our dependents (it still shows her older brother's information in the questionnaire, and we haven't been able to claim him for years, he's over 24 and earns too much to claim as "other dependent" even though he still lives with us)? Or is that going to cause a problem if in 2025 we want to claim her as "other dependent" to get the $500 credit because our income will be less than half of what it was in 2024 (provided we don't start converting 401K money)? As I understand it, she will not be able to claim the AOTC for 2025 even if she doesn't live with us and *does* pay her own rent and living expenses, because she is a full time student under 24 and we have to include the fair market rent of our house and even our grocery and utility bills (divided by 4) as her "support" in addition to what she is actually spending in another state. So even if she paid all her own living expenses those are going to be less than 1/4 of *our* household expenses.
I just don't want to cause a problem for her this year because she said on her return that we are not claiming her as a dependent, and I also don't want to cause a problem for next year (2025 taxes) and beyond by deleting her from our return for 2024 and then adding her back as a dependent in 2025 to get the $500 creidt (even though we will not be eligible for the AOTC because our income will be over $180,000).
