Alan is divorced and the son he supports lives with him. He files as HOH. Beth is divorced and lives and supports her daughter (dad is a deadbeat). She files as HOH. Alan and Beth meet and then jointly rent a two-bedroom apartment. They split all the expenses right down the middle with each paying 50%. After all, 50% of a two-bedroom apartment is less than 100% of a one-bedroom apartment. Can they still both file as HOH?
This sounds like a homework question.
The answer is that neither of them can file as head of household. One of the requirements for head of household filing status is that you pay MORE than half the cost of keeping up the home. If they truly split the expenses exactly in half, then neither one pays MORE than half, so neither one can file as head of household.
They should agree that one of them will pay a little more than half and file as head of household. The other one still has to file as single. Because of the "more than half" requirement, there is no way that two people in the same household can both file as head of household.
Bob Sandler
They should be able to agree, with IRS Form 8832, that each can claim one child as a dependent, so that both can claim to be heads of household.
I was having trouble finding a definition of "Household". But I wonder why this isn't two independent households that happen to share an apartment. If that is the case, it would seem to my layman's sense that each of them contributes 100% of the cost of each independent household. Is that not the case?
For many years, my son's mother and I gave each other 8332s in alternating years, so that we could alternate claiming him as a dependent. The advice that I was given was that, since she had sole physical custody (it was a joint legal custody situation), she always got to claim Head of Household, no matter who claimed him as a dependent.
This would seem to be borne out by the text on the 8332 reading: [...] It doesn’t apply to other tax benefits, such as the earned income credit, dependent care credit, or head of household filing status. [...]
Now that you mention it, I think you're right. I did see that somewhere else recently.
I'm still confused about why there is a need for Form 8832 and why this isn't a case of two separate, unrelated households at the same address.
My reading of the initial story is that one has
If they each rented separate one-bedroom apartments, they would clearly be two separate households. So why does deciding to share a two-bedroom apartment for economic reasons change that?
It's not only about households. But dividing the costs right down the middle means that neither paid more than half the support for either child, which is a requirement.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't the solution to the problem this? Instead of each person paying 50% of all expenses, Alan should pay
100% of the expenses directly related to his child (food, clothing, tuition, toys, etc.), Beth should pay 100% percent of the expenses associated with her child (same kind of items as Abel), and they should split evenly only the common expenses like rent, electricity, water, etc. that would be too hard to split up. In this way, you effectively have two households, with each parent and child constituting their own household.Think of it this way. If instead of a single apartment, suppose we had a large dormitory type room with 6 or 8 parent-child couples all sharing a common space and each paying for their own expense but pooling the cost of rent. Do we really think the IRS would consider this to be one giant household? Seems to me a household is a family unit where a parent is living with his or her dependent child or children. Multiple such couples, unrelated to one another, mean multiple households.
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Yes, that's the best way to handle it. But that wasn't how OP presented the issue.
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