How can I claim my son, in his 40s, as a dependent? Living in my house the past few years having been released from prison and on parole, he only earned $4300 in 2022.

[Barebroz1]

His income was reported on a 1099-NEC as it was earned in a program he was in where he was trained and worked in tree service. In working his income in TT, the program wanted to change the $4300 to self employment income but I was able to delete the Schedule C and the taxes owed/refunded came out to $0.

[leeloo]

To claim your son, you meely list his name, social security number and date of birth in the personal info section. You will then be asked a series of questions to see if he qualifies.

He is required to file a return and report his 1099-NEC earnings as self-employment. You can't jury rig the program to omit this.

[Hal_Al]

Q. How can I claim my son, in his 40s, as a dependent?

A. You enter him as a potential dependent, in the personal info section, and then follow the TurboTax (TT) interview to qualify him. 

There are two types of dependents, "Qualifying Children"(QC) and Other ("Qualifying Relative" in IRS parlance even though they don't have to actually be related). 

A person can still be a Qualifying relative dependent, if not a Qualifying Child, if he meets the 6 tests for claiming a dependent:

1. Closely Related OR live with the taxpayer ALL year
2. His/her gross taxable income for the year must be less than $4400 (2022).
3. The taxpayer must have provided more than 1/2 his support
4. He must be a US citizen or resident of the US, Canada or Mexico
5. He must not file a joint return with his spouse or be claiming a dependent of his own
6. He must not be the qualifying child of another taxpayer

The IRS has a worksheet that can be used to help with the support calculation. See: http://apps.irs.gov/app/vita/content/globalmedia/teacher/worksheet_for_determining_support_4012.pdf The support value of a home is the fair market rental value, divided by the number of occupants.

If he was incarcerated for part of 2022, the support provided by the state, for that time, counts against you.

Even if he is a dependent, he can still file a tax return of his own. It was not necessary to get his amount owed to 0, for him to be your dependent. 

A separate issue is how his 1099-NEC income should be reported.

[KrisD15]

If he is your dependent, you claim him, but he also files to claim the income on the 1099-NEC.

When he files, he needs to select "Someone else can claim me" and "Someone else will claim me" if he is indeed your dependent. 

@Barebroz1 

[Barebroz1]

Thank you for the info that you provided. When I entered his personal information in the interview questions, the response I got was that he made over $4000 eliminated him as my dependent. I will check into that further.
Upon working his return in the program, entering the $4300 that was reported on the 1099–NEC assumed that it was for self-employment, which it was not. He was being paid for his time in training, and then for providing the tree service as part of the program to get former convicts into the working force. When it transferred the information to schedule C, the program indicated that he would owe some $300 in federal taxes. By deleting the schedule, C, the program entered the standard deduction of $12k+ which resulted in zero dollar owed or refund.
I will go back through my return and see if I can find those questions that might qualify him as a non-dependent family member who I supported for the entire year.

[leeloo]

Being paid as a non-employee means you have to file Schedule C. 

Again, you can't just delete Scedule C and include the income another way. The IRS gets a copy of the 1099 and you will get letters telling you to pay the balance due.