and to qualify for the head of household
filing status.
Thirdly, your child must pass the residency
test in order to qualify you for the dependent exemption and the
head of household filing status. In order to meet this test,
your child must have lived with you for more than half of the
year. There are exemptions for children who were temporarily
absent, children who were born or who died during the year. If
you child was kidnapped you must follow certain procedures and
abide by certain rules and you can also qualify the residency
test. Furthermore, there are exceptions for children of divorced
or separated parents.
The fourth test is the support test to be a
qualifying child for the dependent exemption and the head of
household filing status. To meet this test, the child cannot
have provided more than half of his or her own support for the
year. If the individual is your qualifying relative then this
support test follows different procedures. This will be
discussed eventually.
Lastly, to be a qualifying child, the child
must meet the jointly return test. This is probably the easiest
of the five tests to meet. You most probably not encounter
having to file a tax return with this situation at hand.
However, you must be prepared in case you do get a client that
has a married child and they want to claim the child on their
tax return. To meet this test, the child cannot file a joint
return the year. That is unless the child files a joint return
only to claim a refund and no taxes would be saved by the child
filing a joint return.
There are four test that you must meet for a
person to be your qualifying relative and to qualify you to
claim dependent exemption and the head of household filing
status. First, your qualifying relative must not be your
qualifying child and thus pass the "Not a Qualifying Child
Test". The child is not your qualifying relative if your child
is your qualifying child or the qualifying child of any other
taxpayer for that matter. Secondly, your qualifying relative
must meet either the member of household or the relationship
test. Therefore, this person must either live with you all year
as a member of your household or this person must be related to
you in one of the ways as relatives who do not have to live with
you in order to claim their exemptions. If that person was your
spouse at any time, that person cannot be your qualifying
relative. Thirdly, your qualifying relative must meet the gross
income test. In order to meet this test the person's gross
income for the year must not be more the regular exemption
amount for the year. This amount is $3,950 and changes every
year to allow for inflation. Lastly, your qualifying relative
must meet the support test. The support test to be a qualifying
relative must generally be met by providing more than half of a
person's total support during the year for which you want to
qualify to claim the dependent exemption or for the head of
household filing status.
There are many rules for different items on
your tax return. They can easily be confused. However, you must
know the difference between the rules serving the different
purposes. For example, if you want to claim a dependent
exemption and thus qualify to file as head of household, you
must have a qualifying child or a qualifying relative and they
must pass the different test to be considered are your
qualifying person. You must pass the five tests for a qualifying
child and the four tests if you have a qualifying relative.
These are are same set of rules and tests that you must abide
by in order to claim an exemption for your
