We support our son but he works pt & earned $13,000. last year, how do we handle taxes?

Question

we pay for education, medical, food, clothing, housing. Does he file a return as an individual and then do we still claim him on our return?

Answer 1

Whether or not you can claim him depends upon his age and his student status.

If he's under 19, you can claim him as a dependent regardless of his income as long as you provide more than half of his support. Only the income that he used for actual self-support comes into play here.

If he's over 18 but under 23 and a full time student you can still claim him as above.

If he's 19 or over, and not a full time student, you can no longer claim him as a dependent as his income is too high. The cutoff is $3,300 in gross income to claim him as a dependent regardless of how much support you provide.

He must file a return regardless of whether or not you can claim him as a dependent.

Answer 2

If he is 24 or older, or is over 18 and not a full-time student, or if he didn't live with you over half the year, you can't claim him as a dependent no matter how much support you provide for him. If he lived with you for over half the year, and he's under 24 and a full-time student or is under 19, then it can depend on what he does with his income - whether he saves it, or spends it on his own support. And if he's spending the whole amount on recreation, a car, sports....those are part of support that he's paying for himself, even if you provide all the "necessities".

If he's under 19 OR under 24 and a full-time student for part of at least 5 months of the year, and he lives with you at least half of the year, and he doesn't provide over half of his own support, then you can probably claim him as a dependent. With income that high, unless he's saving pretty much all of it, you might be hard pressed to prove that he didn't provide over half of his own support, so you might have a hard time proving that you can claim him.

In any case, he will need to file his own return. If you can claim him, he must check the box on his return that says he can be claimed as a dependent - this is whether you actually DO claim him or not.

Answer 3

Contrary to an earlier answer, if he was under *24* years of age at the end of 2006, a full-time student AND not filing a joint return with a spouse, you can claim him as long as you provided more than half of his support (see Table 3-1, page 28, IRS Publication 17 at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf). If he was under 19 at the end of 2006 and not filing a joint return with a spouse, you can claim him even if he wasn't a full-time student. In either case, he would still need to file his own tax return since his income is above the filing requirement. It's important that you talk to him about what he plans to do and what you'd like to do because if the IRS sees the same Social Security number being used twice for an exemption, they will usually reject the latter return. Also, please note that the law states that if the parents are qualified to claim the dependent, the dependent cannot take his or her own personal exemption even if the parents elect not to take the dependent's exemption. In other words, if you are rightfully able to claim your son as your dependent, you should. I hope that helps and best of luck to you all!

Answer 4

Assuming he is under 18 or both under 24 and a full time student, I believe you can still claim him as a dependent as long as you provide at least half of his support. See page 19 of the instructions for the 1040 for details about rules for claiming him as a dependent.

With $13,000 of income, he will be required to file his own return in either case. If you can claim him, he must mark that someone else can claim him and can't take the personal exemption. If you can claim him, his total Federal income tax should be about $800. If his withholding is more than that, he should receive a refund. If you can't claim him, his tax should be around $450.

Answer 5

if he's a full time student under age 24 (better check me on the age) and you provide more than 50% of his support you can claim him. he should still file a return and claim zero exemptions. there's a place on his return where he reports that he is claimed by someone else.