Claiming child deductions without being a head of household

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 22, 2025
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Divorced parent with 50% custody here. I pay the majority of my son's expense regarding private school, extra curricular activities, clothes, vacations etc. Can I claim tax deductions without being head of household?

The divorce agreement is that the other parent gets to claim head of household every other year. Last year I went ahead and claimed my kid's expenses and my ex blew up so I want to avoid that situation this year. Can I enter education/misc expenses for my child but still let my spouse claim the child deductions?

Not A Product Question

xmasbaby0

Employee

Are you the custodial parent? Do you have an agreement with the other parent to allow the other parent to claim them--due to divorce or that you live apart and share custody? Did one of you sign a Form 8332?

If there is a signed 8332 then the custodial parent retains the right to file as Head of Household, get earned income credit and the childcare credit. The non-custodial parent gets the child tax credit for children under the age of 17.

If you and the other parent have a signed agreement, you need to indicate in MY INFO that you have such an agreement.

As far as the IRS is concerned, the custodial parent is the one with whom the child spent the most nights during the tax year--at least 183 nights.

Education expenses for grades K-12 are not deductible on your Federal return, whether for private, public, or home schooling, nor are the expenses for tutoring, after school lessons or after school activities, such as dance lessons, sports, etc. Some states allow deductions/credits for K-12 education and/or home schooling expenses; if your state has these deductions available, you will be prompted to enter them when you prepare your state return. (As far as I know, the states that offer any sort of K-12 deductions/credits are Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin)

**Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to offer the most correct information possible. The poster disclaims any legal responsibility for the accuracy of the information that is contained in this post.**

Hal_Al

Employee

Q. Can I enter education/misc expenses for my child but still let my spouse claim the child deductions?

A. No. All tax benefits go to the parent claiming the child as a dependent.

That's not technically correct, but for your purposes that's the bottom line.

For tax purposes, there is no such thing as joint (50%) custody, regardless of what your legal agreement says. The requirement, to be custodial parent, is that the child live with you MORE than 50% of the time. One of you has to be the custodial parent and the other the non-custodial parent.

It is allowed for you to arrange the child's schedule so that the child spends more than half the year with the father one year and more than half with the mother the next year so that you are each the custodial parent (and Head of Household) in the year you claim the child, so that you can claim full benefits.

Of course, you can get away with calling yourself custodial parent / Head of household, if you both agree to do it that way.

It's not clear what deductions you were trying to claim. The most common one that would cause conflict is the dependent care credit. And yes, that can only be claimed by the custodial parent (under your arrangement, the one claiming the dependent for that year).