Question

EIC

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 5, 2021
1 reply
0 views

I am working on tax return and I want to know why I can not get past the part regarding EIC - deduction for my son. I am filing as a single with my son as dependent. Turbo tax is telling me he is not a dependent. I get to claim him every even year on my taxes his mother gets to claim him on the odd years. He was born 2019.

I can not get past this part on my computer.

macuser_22

Employee

Unless the child physically lived with you more then half of 2020 you are not eligible to claim him for EIC.

**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.**

Hal_Al

Employee

There is a special rule in the case of divorced & separated (including never married) parents. When the non-custodial parent is claiming the child as a dependent/exemption/child tax credit; the custodial parent is still allowed to claim the same child for Earned Income Credit, Head of Household filing status, and day care credit. This "splitting of the child" is not available to parents who lived together at any time during the last 6 months of the year; then only one of you can claim the child for any tax reasons. The tax benefits may not be split in any other manner.

Note in particular that the non-custodial parent can never claim the Earned Income Credit, Head of Household filing status or the day care credit, based on that child, even when the custodial parent has released the dependency to him.

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Ref: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17#en_US_2017_publink1000170897

Scroll down to "Children of divorced or separated parents (or parents who live apart)"

You can if you are the custodial parent. The custodial parent is the parent the child lived with for more than 183 nights in 2020 (more than 182 nights in 2019).