To claim a person who lives in your home who is over age 23 as a dependent, the following facts must be true.
1. They have less than $5200 of taxable income for 2025. (Not just work, all taxable income, including things like lottery prizes or unemployment insurance).
2. They lived in your home all 365 days of the year.
3. You paid more than half their total support. Support you pay for includes a pro-rated portion of your rent or mortgage, food, travel, and medical costs. If they receive non-taxable support (welfare, food stamps, gifts from charity, non-taxable social security or disability benefits, etc) that counts as support not provided by you, even if it does not count for the taxable income test. You must pay more than half their support when all their support and all their costs are added up.
4. They do not file a tax return, or only file a return to get a refund of withholding and claim no dependents or credits.
5. No one else can claim them as dependents.
However, even if you can claim them as dependents, they do not qualify you to file as HOH unless they are a close blood relative (parent, child, sibling, or niece or nephew). If they are not that type of person, you can't file as HOH unless you have someone else (like a dependent child under age 19 or a student under age 24) who qualifies you.
