For 2022, you may be better off not trying to claim them. Since they do have SS, if their taxable portion of social security for each of them is more than $4,400 then you would not be able to claim them. If the taxable portion is less than that, then you can attempt to amend.
What happens when you try to do the amendment? Does it give you a rejection, an error, or just refuses to allow you to do so? You are still in the allowed timeframe to change from MFJ to MFS. After April 18th, you would not be able to do so. I would suggest creating a dummy account prior and entering their income separately to see what their actual taxable income would be individually prior to trying to amend the return.
There are 2 loopholes to allowing them to file a joint return and being able to be claimed.
- If filing separate returns neither of them would owe any tax then you would still be able to claim them even if they filed jointly.
- They are filing a return simply to claim a refund
However, when filing separately and selecting someone else can claim them as a dependent, it is very possible they will then have to pay taxes in, even if they just have social security and $100 in dividend income. If you claim them as a dependent, then their standard deduction will decrease to $2,550 (if they are over 65) and they would likely end up owing taxes when filing a separate return. How much would depend on how much social security they received. Again, you can do a dummy return to see if it is worth making the change for this year or if the gain you would have would be offset by the taxes they would owe.
If you do choose to file a 1040X for them, then you would need to manually enter the numbers if TurboTax is not allowing you to make any changes, filing a form for each of them with their original joint return numbers in Column A and change them to their individual numbers in column B of the 1040X. You could use the dummy return to get the individual numbers.
Yes, at this point, no matter what you would do if you claim them, you would need to print and mail your return as it takes several months for an amended return to be processed and your return would not go through electronically without their returns being amended.
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