How to Claim Recovery Rebate Credit for Dependent

[kw09]

I am married filing jointly with one dependent yet I only received $2,400 and $1,200 for the stimulus payments.

I should have received an extra $1,100 ($500 and $600 payments) for my 1.5 year old daughter. She has not been claimed by anyone else and our AGI is less than $150k. Turbo Tax thinks I have received the correct amount. How do I request the amount for our dependent when filing?

[DavidD66]

If you didn't receive the full amount for your first or second-round stimulus payments, TurboTax will help you claim the Recovery Rebate Credit when you file your taxes this year.   Please see the following Help article on how to do so:

How do I claim the Recovery Rebate Credit in TurboTax?

[kw09]

Thank you for the response. I followed those instructions and Turbo Tax is saying the amount I received looks right. I can't figure out how to report that I'm missing the credit for my dependent.

[KrisD15]

Does the child have a Social Security Number? 

According to the IRS:

"A qualifying child must have either:

• An SSN that’s valid for employment and assigned to them before the due date of your 2019 return (including the filing deadline postponement to July 15 and an extension to October 15 if you requested it); or
• An ATIN.

An ITIN won’t be accepted for a qualifying child."

IRS Link

[Opus 17 · Accepted solution]

I think the most common problem would be the lack of a Social Security number. Another possibility is if the dependent is not listed as your child. If this is your step child or adopted child, that should legally be the same as a biological child. Are you selecting “other“ for the relationship?  Lastly, the person must be age 16 or less. Is the birthdate correct in the interview?

You may want to delete the dependent from your tax program and then re-enter them. If this is your child who lives with you more than half the nights of the year and this is not a custody situation, the child should also qualify you for a $2000 child tax credit. Are you seeing that in your tax return?

[kw09]

@Opus 17 You solved it! She was born in 2019 and Turbo Tax had saved the partial year again for 2020. Once I deleted her and added her back in I answered all of the dependent prompts and changed the months living with me to "the whole year". Suddenly I got the full $2k Child Tax Credit and the missing Recovery Rebate Credit. Thank you!

[Opus 17]

Unless a newborn is subject to a custody dispute, you should always answer “the whole year“ for how long a newborn lived with you. It may be that you prevented yourself from getting the $2000 child tax credit on your 2019 return and you may have only gotten the $500 “other dependent“ tax credit, if you did not answer “the whole year“ for 2019.  You may be able to amend your 2019 return to get the extra credit you missed.

Start by printing a copy of your 2019 return and look to see which box is checked in column 4 in the list of dependents, and check to see how much of a dependent credit you received on line 13a.  That may also explain why are you did not receive a stimulus payment for the child.

Here are the instructions to amend.

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/amend-tax-return/help/how-do-i-amend-my-2019-turbotax-online-retur...

[kw09]

@Opus 17 Thank you! I will amend my federal return. Follow-up question: If I only update the dependent  information, do I need to also amend my state return (Oregon)? It looks like there is no impact to the amount in my state return.

[Opus 17]

If there is no change to Oregon, you would not send anything to them.  If Oregon has only one kind of dependent with one dollar amount of deduction or benefit, then changing the residency might not make a difference.