It doesn't matter what you put in the occupation line on your tax form. The IRS only uses it for comparison purposes. Suit yourself.
The unasked question is: do you claim your own exemption or do your parents claim you. Support, alone, does not determine that. If they can claim you, the next question is what tax benefits can they claim you for. How old you are is one of the parameters for answering that question, but is, along with support, not the only determining factor.
It's quite complicated.
There
is a rule that says IF somebody else CAN claim YOU as a dependent, You are not
allowed to claim your own exemption. If you have sufficient income (usually more than
$6300), you can & should
still file taxes, you just don’t get your own $4050 exemption (deduction). In
TurboTax, you indicate that somebody else can claim you as a dependent.
There are two types of dependents, "Qualifying Children"(QC) and
standard ("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, a relationship test and a residence
test. Only a QC qualifies the taxpayer for the Earned Income Credit, the
Child Tax Credit. They are interrelated but the rules are different for each.
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 at least 5 months of the year, or is totally &
permanently disabled
2. He did not provide more than 1/2 his own support. Scholarships are
considered third party support and not as support provided by the student.
3. He lived with the parent
(including temporary absences such as away at school) for more than half
the year
A person can still be a Qualifying
relative dependent, if not a Qualifying Child, if he meets the 6 tests for
claiming a dependent:
1. Closely Related OR live
with the taxpayer ALL year
2. His/her gross taxable income for the year must be less than $4,050 (2016)
3. The taxpayer must have
provided more than 1/2 his support. Note how that is a different support test from QC
In either case:
4. He must be a US citizen or resident of the US, Canada
or Mexico
5. He must not file a joint
return with his spouse or be claiming a dependent of his own
6. He must not be the
qualifying child of another taxpayer
