No, only one parent can claim the child. If there is dispute as to who will claim the child, there are Tiebreaker Rules that the IRS will use to decide who claims the child. If that is the situation, usually the parent with the highest adjusted gross income (AGI) if the child
lived with each parent for the same amount of time during the tax years, will claim the 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. Please refer to the following link for more details. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch03.html
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If only one of the persons is the child's parent, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the parent.
-
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.
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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.
-
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.
-
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.
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.
