Adult child as a dependent

[DETaxpayer]

I provided more than 50% support for my 22 year old adult son in 2015 while he searched for a job after graduation.  He did get a job the last few months and made about $10,000.  Can I deduct him as a dependent?

[StephanieR1 · Accepted solution]

If your son was still a Full Time Student in 2015 you should still be able to claim him even though he earned $10,000.  See this article for more details on the dependent rules.

Here is the IRS definition of student

Student defined.   To qualify as a student, your child must be, during some part of each of any 5 calendar months of the year:

1. A full-time student at a school that has a regular teaching staff, course of study, and a regularly enrolled student body at the school, or

2. A student taking a full-time, on-farm training course given by a school described in (1), or by a state, county, or local government agency.

The 5 calendar months do not have to be consecutive.

Full-time student.   A full-time student is a student who is enrolled for the number of hours or courses the school considers to be full-time attendance.

Dependent children will generally be required to file if their earned income is greater than $6,300 or their unearned income is greater than $1,050.  See this IRS Publication for more details on amounts.

If you do not claim your child as dependent he may file to receive a refund but is not required to if his only income is wages totaling less than $10,300

[jen7]

Feedback:  Add several cautionary steps for college age adult student doing their own taxes using EZ expecting/wanting to get a refund to STOP and have their parents do the student's taxes instead at the same time they're doing their own.  The adult, working student will not get a refund, but it's more advantageous for the parents paying for the student's college to claim the college expenses than for the student to get a refund. Recommend the student's taxes and the parents taxes be done simultaneously by the parent instead of the student doing their own taxes ahead of the parents. Because the working adult college student is using an EZ form that will most likely result in a refund, it causes problems with the parent's tax forms when they try to claim the student.  Once the student submits their taxes, claiming themselves, for a refund, there's no adjusting without doing a hard copy amendment.  Then, when the parents go to do their taxes and try to claim the adult student, it will result in an error.  As parents, this caused us many extra hours of rework, amendments, submitting hard copies, getting tax advisor help, etc. to fix, after-the-fact, this simple issue that could have been avoided with a cautionary "Stop" had my working adult student not tried to get a silly (I think it was $30) refund.  Thank-you!

[macuser_22]

@jen - A person that *can* be a dependent *cannot* claim themselves whether the taxpayer that can claim them actually claims them or not - that it the tax law.

While nobody can be compelled to claim a dependent, a dependent cannot claim them self if they can be claimed by another tax payer - the tax law does not allow that.

That is why there are two questions in the interview - *can* you be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer, and *were* you (or will you) actually be claimed by that taxpayer?

In both cases the dependent will not get their own $4,505 personal exemption.  If the answer to the second question is "yes" then the taxpayer claiming the  dependent gets it, if the answer is "no" the exemption is lost, but the dependent is then allowed to claim certain educational credits that cannot be claimed by a dependent if they are actually claimed.   Some educational credit cannot be claimed.

See IRS Pub 17 Personal Exemptions - Your Own Exemption
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch03.html#en_US_2016_publink1000170848">https://www.irs.gov/pub...>

You can take one exemption for yourself unless you can be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer. If another taxpayer is entitled to claim you as a dependent, you can’t take an exemption for yourself even if the other taxpayer doesn't actually claim you as a dependent.