Question

can we claim our college grad as a dependent

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 26, 2020
1 reply
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Our child graduated college in May 2019 and lived with us until October 2019 with no income. She found a job, moved out and earned $8000 in the remainder of the year. Can we claim her as a dependent?

She seems to meet all of the requirements of a qualifying child, my only question is does her income disqualify her?

M

MinhT1

No, her income does not disqualify her as your dependent IF she is aged under 24 and a full time student in 2019.

If she is 24 or older, her income would disqualify her.

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Hal_Al

Employee

Yes, you can, most likely, still claim her as a qualifying child dependent.

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.

With the tax law change, effective 2018, someone with $8000 income, will get the same refund whether they claim themselves or not. The personal exemption has been eliminated and the standard deduction increased.

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