Daycare tax deduction in Florida?

Question

Hello,

I'm a single mother, anual income about 23k. I have a baby and the father pays child support and daycare expenses.
We pay 800/month for daycare.
I know I'll have a tax deduction by the end of the year, so the "net cost" of daycare will be actually less than 800/month.
Can anybody help me to "estimate" how much deduction will I have so we can calculate the net cost of daycare?

Note: the reason why I want to claim the credit is because the father lives in Canada, so he cannot claim the credit.
And he pays all now, but precisely what we want to do is to share the expense, and for that we need to know aprox. the net cost of it.

Answer 1

If the father is the one who pays the daycare expenses then he would have to be the person who could get the child care credit, not you. I have included the IRS link to the instructions to form 2441 - Child and dependent care expenses.

Just to let you know though, that you should be able to file your tax return as "head of household" because of your baby, and also with your baby you should get a Child Tax Credit of $1,000

Answer 2

There is no "deduction" for daycare expenses.

There is a Dependent Care Credit that you can take if you must place your child in care so that you can work. The credit is based upon your actual expenses so there is nothing that you can "estimate" that is going to do you any good. File Form 2441 with your tax return to claim the credit. The credit will reduce your tax liability but cannot reduce it to less than $0.

Here's a link to the instructions: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i2441.pdf

Here's a link to the form: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f2441.pdf

However, if the father is paying these expenses, YOU cannot take the credit. You must actually pay the expenses yourself to take the credit.

Based upon your added information, nobody can claim the credit. The father can't claim it as he's not subject to US taxation -- I'm assuming that he's Canadian here and doesn't file a US return. Since you didn't pay the daycare expenses, YOU cannot claim the credit either.

For you to claim the credit, see if you can get the child support amount amended to include an amount equal to the child care expenses and have the father pay that directly to you. You then pay the child care expenses yourself and will then qualify for the credit.