eic question

[ljwalters]

Children father and mother live with maternal grandmother. Grandmother does all support. Father got job aug of last year. Father wants to claim children and claim EICTC. Does Father qualify? Grand mother has claimed on her return Mother and children for several years (Mother does not work no income).

My thinking Both Father and GrandMother qualify and higher income is the tie breaker Father does not qualify under these conditions.

Am I right

foot note. Grandmother doesn't care one way or the other, Just want to be right.

[BulldogTom]

I think the tiebreaker rules say that if the child qualifies as a qualifying child of more than one person, and one of the persons who can claim the child is a parent and the other person is not, the child is the qualifying child of the parent. Double check me on that, cause I am doing it from memory.

Tom

Hollister, CA

[Pacun]

Tie breaker rules only apply if two or more people claim the same child. The first tie breaker is parental relationship which will be won by the father, which will be end of the conversation.

[Jack from Ohio]

Who provides the houshold? I am not sure father can claim EIC.

[joanmcq]

HOH & EIC don't go together. Dependency & EIC do.

[Pacun]

Dependency & EIC do.

Not exactly correct. Father can claim EIC without claiming anyone on the return and let the grand mother claim children and mother and qualify as HOH.

[Terry D EA]

check out the link below as this should clear up any questions regarding the tie breaker rules. In this scenario, look at the last line in the tie breaker rules, the grandmother, providing she has the higher AGI, can claim the EIC and HOH as well. By the original post, I am assuming the grandmother has the higher AGI. Now, with this said, it comes down to choice. if the father who can claim the EITC and does not, then the Grandmother can. It might be a good suggestion to work with the returns for all interested to see who which would return the higher refund and if all things being equal, it would benefit all.

<<<<<Tie breaker rules only apply if two or more people claim the same child. The first tie breaker is parental relationship which will be won by the father, which will be end of the conversation.>>>>>

Not exactly correct either. Joan's response is correct for this scenario.

http://www.eitc.irs.gov/central/abouteitc/basicqualifications/tiebreaker/

[Guest Taxed]

Hopefully you guys are charging appropriately for running different scenarios? I wonder how much time or scenarios a VITA preparer would give them?

[ljwalters]

Father took one child. Father did not qualify for HOH because he did not PAY household expenses.

[Pacun]

Do we agree that support has nothing to do with EIC and support doesn't have anything to do with dependency when the child is qualifying child for the tax payers as long as the child didn't provide more than 50% of his her own support? In this case, the grand mother lived with the children, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. The children are qualifying children for the grand mother, the mother and the father.

Since the father lived with them more that 6 months, he qualifies to file single not claim any children and file EIC form listing them without claiming them. As long as the parents don't claim the children, the grandmother can.

[BulldogTom]

Where does it say "boyfreind" in the OP? It says father and mother. I guess I am old fashioned and I assumed that they were married.

Tom

Hollister, CA

[kcjenkins]

Sad,, but these days you can not assume that.