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Did you enter income from working in 2025?
Make sure you have entered your child as a dependent in My Info, and that you have entered the child's Social Security number. Careful— do not say that your child’s SSN is not valid for employment. If your child was born in 2025 make sure you said he lived with you the whole year. There is an oddly worded question that asks if the child paid over half their own support. Say NO to that question.
If your dependent was a full-time college student, make sure you were careful on the MY INFO screen for “Uncommon situations” and that you indicated there that they were a student.
Have you entered income from working in 2025? If not, you will not receive an income tax refund based on having dependent children.
The maximum amount of the child tax credit is now $2200 per child; the refundable “additional child tax credit” amount is $1700. In order to get that credit, you have to have income from working.
Take the amount you earned from working. Subtract $2500. Multiply the rest by 15%. That is the additional child tax credit per child that you canget—- up to the maximum of $1700 per child. If the amount you earned from working was low, you will not get the full $1700 per child.
If your child is older than 16 at the end of 2025, you do not get the CTC. But you may still get the non-refundable $500 credit for other dependents instead.
And for the Earned Income Credit—-
https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/use-the-eitc-assistant
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p596.pdf
Look at your 2025 Form 1040 to see the child-related credits you received
PREVIEW 1040
Child Tax Credit line 19
Credit for Other Dependents line 19
Earned Income Credit line 27
Additional Child Tax Credit line 28
It depends. One of the most frequent causes of this discrepancy is how residency is reported for your dependents. If you selected that they lived with you for six months or less, you won't get the credit because the requirement is for them to live with you for more than half the year. You should double-check the "My Info" section to ensure their residency is marked as seven months or the entire year. A child born in 2025 should be marked as lived with you for the whole year.
Another possibility is the investment income limit for the 2025 tax year. If you have interest, dividends, or capital gains that exceed $11,950, you are ineligible for the EIC regardless of how many dependents you have.
Finally, you should verify that your filing status and Social Security information are correct. If you are using the "Married Filing Separately" status, you are generally disqualified from the EIC. Additionally, if you or your dependents have an ITIN rather than a valid Social Security Number, the credit will be denied. Make sure you did not accidentally check that their Social Security Number is not valid for employment.
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