If more than one taxpayer could claim your child, that is, if the child meets the relationship, age, residence, and support test for you and another person(s), tax law allows only ONE person to claim the child as a qualifying child.
You and the other person(s) will therefore have to agree on who will claim the child for a particular year. If you and the other person(s) cannot agree on who will claim the child, the IRS tiebreaker rules will then come into effect, and will decide who will claim the child. The tiebreaker rules state that:
• If only one of the persons is the child’s parent, the child is the qualifying child of the parent.
• If two of the persons are parents of the child and they do not file a joint return together, the child is the qualifying child of the parent with whom the child lived for the longer period of time during the year.
• If the two persons are parents of the child and they do not file a joint return together, and the child lived with each parent the same amount of time during the year, the child is the qualifying child of the parent with the highest adjusted gross income.
• If none of the persons are the child’s parents, only the person with the highest AGI can treat the child as a qualifying child.
The primary objective of this article is to empower taxpayers to learn to do their own taxes. For more information on how to claim your exemptions, grab yourself a copy of “Doing Your Own Taxes is as Easy as 1, 2, 3,” ($6.98) on TaxConnections.com.
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