If baby & I rcvd Medicaid/WIC benefits based on my income & a family size of 2 w/ him as my dependent child, do I have to claim him on my federal taxes or can his dad?

[sherrymonami]

We both are custodial parents but are unmarried filing single/separate.

[Critter]

You cannot both be custodial parents per the IRS definition.   Unless you all live together then you failed to report that to Medicaid since that would mean you had a family of 3. I do believe you had to report the entire household income.

[Carl]

If the parents are not living together, you don't get to chose who claims the child here. The IRS says the custodial parent claims the child, and the custodial parent is the parent with whom the child lived with for more than 182 days of the tax year. If the child was born in the tax year, then it's the parent with whom the child lived for more than half the time since the child's birth.

[Opus 17]

That would be a question best directed toward your state social services agency.  

For social services purposes, they may want to know that you are living with the other parent and that parent's income, regardless of how you file your tax return.  Not informing them that you are living with the other parent may be benefits fraud.  The IRS will not share your tax information with your state (such as, who claims the dependent) but your state tax return information might be shared with the state social services agency.

For IRS purposes, if you live together unmarried, then either parent can claim the child, but only one parent can claim the child.  You can't "split" the benefits as is the case for some parents who live apart and share custody.  Generally, the  most tax savings will come if the parent with the higher income claims the child, but that is not always true if EIC is an issue.  The only way to find out the best tax situation is to test it both ways.

For Turbotax purposes, the parent who will not claim the child should not even list the child in their return.  Listing the child and then doing the dependent qualification interview can sometimes lead to incorrect results because the interview is poorly designed when looking at unmarried parents who live together.