I am 78 years old and retired. I have not filed taxes in a few years because my only income has been social security, and Turbo Tax never showed me as owing anything or getting a refund. I have been taking care of my mother (97 years old) for the past five years and paying for almost everything. She only has social security income and nothing else. She needs constant 24/7 care, which I provide to her at home.
I just realized after some research that I probably should have been filing taxes just to claim my mother as my Dependent and then file as Head of Household to get a refund. I'm going to do this for this year, 2024.
With that being said, I think I'd like to file returns for the past few years so I can claim my mother has a Dependent and file as Head of Household, as the situation has been the same for many years.
I have a few questions:
1) If I filed taxes for 2023 now, it wouldn't truly be an "amended" return since I did not file a return last year. Would my 2023 return still be called and considered an "amended" return? I just want to make sure I understand the verbiage.
2) If I filed an "amended" 2023 return, would I do that using the 2023 Turbo Tax software or the 2024 Turbo Tax software?
3) How many years could I file back to claim my mother as a Dependent and then file as Head of Household?
4) In general, is it okay to do this...amend the past few years' tax returns for the specific reason to claim my mother as a Dependent and then file as Head of Household, with the reason being that I just didn't understand how this all worked until now? Would doing this raise any red flags? Would the government seeing a bunch of amended tax returns, all submitted in the next few days, raise any eyebrows?
Thank you so much for your time.
