Briefly, there are 5 tax benefits of having a child
dependent: Dependent exemption, child tax credit, dependent care credit, head
of household, and eligible for EIC. The tax code assigns all 5 benefits to the
parent who has custody more than half the time. Custody is defined as
where the child sleeps at night. (If the child is on a sleep over of a
camping trip etc, the day is counted toward the parent where the child would
have slept if not for the event in question.)
So for the IRS there is no 50% custody, you have to
count nights, and one parent will almost always have more than the other.
If for some reason the # of days is exactly equal (like in a leap year,
366 days, exactly 183 nights for each parent) then the tax benefits are
assigned to the parent with the higher income.
If the divorce decree says that the non-custodial
parent (parent with less than 50% time) gets the dependents in a certain year,
the custodial parent must fill out and sign a copy of form 8332 and give it to
the other parent, this releases the tax benefits to the other parent.
However, the form 8332 only
transfers the dependent exemption and the child tax credit. Eligibility
for Head of Household, Dependent Care Credit, and EIC always stays with the
custodial parent and cannot be
transferred. The only way to transfer all 5 tax benefits from one
parent to the other parent is to arrange the children's sleeping schedules so
that the desired parent qualifies for the particular year.
If you are the custodial parent, then in the years
when you give your ex the form 8332 allowing him or her to claim the dependent
exemption and child tax credit, you can still qualify for EIC, Head of
Household and the Dependent Care benefit. You do this by carefully
answering the questions in the dependent interview in turbotax by saying yes
you have a dependent, and yes you are signing a form 8332 to allow the ex to
claim the exemption. Turbotax will assign a special status to your
children of "Non-dependent, EIC or Care
Credit Only"
