Can I still carry my child that graduated out of college in June of 2020

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 28, 2021
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Can I carry my child as a dependent if he' graduated out of college in June or 2020

TurboTax Online

DJS

Employee

To be a qualifying child dependent

Your child must be under age 19 or, if a full-time student, under age 24. There is no age limit if your child is permanently and totally disabled.
Your child must live with you for more than half the year, but several exceptions apply.
Your child may have a job, but that job cannot provide more than half of her support.
This requirement commonly applies to children of divorced parents. Here you must use the “tie breaker rules,” which are found in IRS Publication 501. These rules establish income, parentage and residency requirements for claiming a child.

To be a qualifying relative:

Your relative must live at your residence all year or be on the list of “relatives who do not live with you” in Publication 501. About 30 types of relatives are on this list.
our relative cannot have a gross income of more than $4,300 in 2020 and be claimed by you as a dependent.
You must provide more than half of your relative’s total support each year.
You have to be the only person claiming them. This means you can’t claim the same person twice, once as a qualifying relative and again as a qualifying child. It also means you can’t claim a relative—say a cousin—if someone else, such as his parents, also claim him.

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MinhT1

Yes, if your child is under 24 years of age at the end of 2020 and was a full time student in 2020.

To be considered full time, a student has to be enrolled full time for 5 months or part-months in 2020. Your child would satisfy this condition if he graduated in June 2020.

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Hal_Al

Employee

Graduation year

If he/she was a student (under 24) for at least 5 months and lived with you for more than half the year, and did not provide more than 1/2 his own support for the whole year, you can still claim him. Be sure he knows you're claiming him, so he doesn't claim himself. He can only be claimed once. But, he can "file taxes" without claiming his own exemption.

The real question is who should be claiming him in this "transition" year to adulthood. You two have to agree on who is going to claim his exemption. Each should do their taxes both ways and see which way the family comes out best. Even then, you have to meet the rules. The rule is that a child of a taxpayer can still be a “Qualifying Child” dependent, regardless of his income, if:

he is a full time student under 24 for at least 5 calendar months of the year (graduating in May usually means you meet the 5 month rule)
he did not provide more than 1/2 his own support (scholarships are considered 3rd party support and not support provided by the student).
lived with the parent (including time away at school) for more than half the year

So, it usually hinges on "Did he provide more than 1/2 his own support in 2019.

The support value of the home you provided is the fair market rental value of the home plus utilities & other expenses divided by the number of occupants. IRS Publication 501 on page 20 has a worksheet that can be used to help with the support calculation. See: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p501.pdf