What Is Needed for Filing Taxes With Dependents?
If you support people other than yourself or your spouse, you may be eligible to claim them on your federal income taxes as dependents. Claiming others as dependents decreases your federal income tax liability because each dependent decreases your taxable income. However, you need to know who you can claim and under what circumstances so that you do not illegally claim someone as your dependent.
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Eligibility
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Dependent children have lower requirements to be claimed on your income taxes than qualifying relatives. For qualifying children, the child must be your biological or adopted child or grandchild, under 19 years old at year-end, not pay half of her own support and live with you half the year (except for special circumstances such as schooling). The child can be under 24 if a full-time student or any age if permanently disabled. For qualifying relatives, the person must be related to you or live the entire year with you, cannot file a joint return if married, have less income than the exemption amount for the year and have you provide more than half his support.
Information
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In order to claim dependents on your taxes, you need to include their legal name, Social Security number and relationship to you. If your dependent does not have a Social Security number yet, such as if you had a child late in the year, you can either request a filing extension for your federal income taxes or file your taxes and then when you get the Social Security number file an amended tax return.
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Filing Options
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When you file your income taxes with dependents, you must use either Form 1040 or Form 1040A; Form 1040EZ is not an option because it does not allow you to claim any dependents. On both Form 1040 and Form 1040A, dependents are reported on line 6. In column 1, report the dependant's name. In column 2, report the dependent's Social Security number. In column 3, report the dependent's relationship to you. Make sure that you have the correct Social Security number as failing to report the Social Security number, or reporting an incorrect Social Security number can cause your exemption to be disallowed.
Considerations
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If multiple people are eligible to claim another person on their income tax return, only one can do so. For example, if two ex-spouses share custody of a child, each may meet the requirements to be able to claim the child. If only one of the people is the parent, that person gets to claim the deduction. If still tied, the person who the child lives with longer can claim the deduction. If still tied, the parent with the highest adjusted gross income is entitled to the deduction.
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