Dependent

- G
- George Anthony
  
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posted
16 years ago

Sun, Feb 10, 2008 5:38 AM

A person want to claim her son as a dependent. He is a 22yr old college student that lives at home and has an AGI of $24,605. The parents have an AGI of $111,000 and have another son living at home. Qualified college expense was $5,500 for 2007. The son in question has saved $5,000 of his earnings and spent the rest on various things such as some of the tuition, a car, boat, computer, etc. The parent said she called IRS and was told that if the child did not pay rent or contribute to the household expenses he could be claimed as a dependent and it didn't make any difference what he made. It seems they are ignoring the 1/2 of of the childs support rule!! Has anyone else run into this situation??

- A
- Alan
  
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posted
16 years ago

Sun, Feb 10, 2008 5:58 AM

He is a qualified child as long as he is not self-supporting. I.e., he is not providing more than half of his own support. In most cases, it is probably true that if a child does not pay rent or contribute to household expenses, those costs typically are more than half the total support. All that being said, under the circumstances you present, it is possible that the child is self-supporting even if he didn't pay rent or contribute to the household and therefore would not be a dependent.

- P
- Phil Marti
  
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posted
16 years ago

Sun, Feb 10, 2008 12:56 PM

Indeed it requires closer scrutiny. Someone's going to have to sit down and calculate the child's total support and the amount of that provided by the child. It appears that the child provided $19,605 for his support. What we don't know is the total cost of his support.