Qualifying Child of More Than One Person
Sometimes, a child meets the relationship, age, residency, support, and joint return tests to be a qualifying child of more than one person. Although the child is a qualifying child of each of these persons, only one person can actually treat the child as a qualifying child to take all of the following tax benefits (provided the person is eligible for each benefit).
1) The exemption for the child.
2) The child tax credit.
3) Head of household filing status.
4) The credit for child and dependent care expenses.
5) The exclusion from income for dependent care benefits.
6)The earned income credit.
The other person can’t take any of these benefits based on this qualifying child. In other words, you and the other person can’t agree to divide these benefits between you. The other person can’t take any of these tax benefits for a child unless he or she has a different qualifying child.
Tiebreaker rules. To determine which person can treat the child as a qualifying child to claim these six tax benefits, the following tiebreaker rules apply.
1- If only one of the persons is the child's parent, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the parent.
2- If the parents file a joint return together and can claim the child as a qualifying child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the parents.
3- If the parents don’t file a joint return together but both parents claim the child as a qualifying child, the IRS will treat the child as the qualifying child of the parent with whom the child lived for the longer period of time during the year. If the child lived with each parent for the same amount of time, the IRS will treat the child as the qualifying child of the parent who had the higher adjusted gross income (AGI) for the year.
4- If no parent can claim the child as a qualifying child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the person who had the highest AGI for the year.
5- If a parent can claim the child as a qualifying child but no parent does so claim the child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the person who had the highest AGI for the year, but only if that person's AGI is higher than the highest AGI of any of the child's parents who can claim the child. If the child's parents file a joint return with each other, this rule can be applied by dividing the parents' combined AGI equally between the parents. See Example 6 .
Subject to these tiebreaker rules, you and the other person may be able to choose which of you claims the child as a qualifying child.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch03.html#en_US_2016_publink1000204278
**Disclaimer: This post is for discussion purposes only and is NOT tax advice. The author takes no responsibility for the accuracy of any information in this post.**
