Whoa! My daughter has never filed a return so she most definitely did not commit fraud. We never even got close to qualifying for stimulus money (income over $200K each year) and I never entertained the thought of applying for it. And I never considered having my dependent daughter file for stimulus. She was sustained partly by financial aid but mostly by us. We have claimed her as a dependent each year. I would never allow my daughter file a fraudulent return. She is attending Law school on a very generous scholarship and we would not jeopardize that. It was only in researching today that I discovered past exchanges about amending dependent status to qualify for stimulus payouts. If you review my statement, I brought up stimulus in that context t, not in relationship to our own past filings. It appears from those on line exchanges that bad advice may have encouraged some filers (or at best failed to warn ) to arbitrarily change both parent and dependent returns to qualify for stimulus. It was that apparently wayward advice e that made me consider changing dependent status but only if it was harmless, which is why i asked. Maybe such bad advice should be scrubbed from comments or annotated with disclaimers.
