Does a 13 year old with ONLY self-employment earned income of less than $6,000 in 2024 need to file a return? If so, how do you pay Self Employment taxes and what form?

[atom88]

Does a 13 year old with ONLY self-employment earned income of less than $6,000 in 2024 need to file a return? If so, how do you pay Self Employment taxes and what form do you fill out?

Can a parent file for the 13 year old minor age child?
If so, can it be done under the parent's form?  Or does the child need to fill out their own form?

[MinhT1 · Accepted solution]

If your child has income in 2024, you don't report your child's income on your tax return.

You can still claim him as a dependent if he didn't provide more than half of his own support for the year and he was under 19 at the end of 2024.

Your child has to file his own tax return and report his self-employment income as it is over $400.

When he reports self-employment income, TurboTax will automatically calculate self-employment tax and populate Schedule SE within his tax return.

Self-employment tax is paid with the tax return, not separately. 

When filing his own tax return, your child has to indicate in the My Info section of TurboTax that he can be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer.

[mesquitebean]

@ atom88  

In addition to the info MinhT1 provided above, also be aware a 13-year-old cannot efile a first return (if this indeed a first return.)  A 13-year-old's first return would have to be printed, signed, dated, and mailed.  However, a paid taxpreparer that uses a Practioner PIN can efile one for you, if desired.

If you file a paper copy by mail instead of a practitioner, perhaps tax expert  @ MinhT1 can tell you how as a parent you would sign the printed copy and if it requires any special notation to that effect.

[atom88]

Thank you for that answer @MinhT1 .  I double checked with a TurboTax person on a personal phone call and she confirmed the same thing, so we are going to file a 1040 Schedule C with SE tax being paid that way.

@mesquitebean I filed via TurboTax and the system confirmed what you were saying.  It said something like: "Due to IRS regulations, since you are under 16 years old and filing for the first time, you HAVE to file on paper, by printing it and mailing it off".

Maybe next year we can efile Federal.

For state taxes, I don't think he was required to file it but we went ahead and filed it anyway.  However, it wouldn't let us efile that either, until we had "eFiled the federal" return.  And since we cannot do that either, we will have to paper mail both federal and state taxes.

thank you again for your help.

[mesquitebean]

You're welcome.  Good luck.