Parent as Household Employee for Social Security Credits

[estimator05]

I pay my mom who lives with me to watch my 2 children via direct deposit from my paychecks. It was about $22k for last year (2023). She's only 58, so not of retirement age yet and wants to be sure this will count towards her retirement credits. I've read that since she's my parent and I don't meet both of the exceptions, I'm not obligated to pay social security or medicare taxes etc, so as far as I can tell I don't need to do anything special within MY tax return. Obviously, SHE needs to report the income still. Should I have made her a W-2 or does she just report it as miscellaneous income?

I found where to do it in TurboTax and it states not to report more than $2,600 and to have the employer submit the W-2, but I saw another comment from several years ago say just ignore that and put the full amount of wages in, so just wanted to be sure we're doing it all correctly. 

Thanks for any direction!

[Opus 17]

Everything is here.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p926

Briefly, you do not withhold or pay household employee tax if the household employee is your parent, except in one special set of circumstances:

a. your parent is caring for your child under age 18, or your child over age 18 who disabled and unable to care for themselves, AND

b. you are divorced and not remarried, a widow or widower and not remarried, or you are married but your spouse is disabled and unable to care for themself.

(I don't understand the reason for these conditions, but that's what it says.  If you are single and never married, or if you are happily married and both parents work, your parent's wages are not taxed; but if you get divorced and your parent cares for your kid, they are taxed.  It's just weird.)

Since (most of the time) a parent's household employee wages are not subject to HHE tax, you do not issue a W-2.  Your parent does not get credit in the social security system.  Your parent reports the income on line 1b under "household employee wages not reported on a W-2."