dependent ?? - brothers - 1 disabled. living in parents house

[Lion EA]

3 hours ago, jklcpa said:

No, it's not.  OP stated that both boys are in their 20s, disabled boy is the younger of the two. At that age, being a student or not wouldn't matter. From OP saying "I would like brother to also be dependent of M&D, but I think he has to file on his own" leads me to believe that he is single.  I'll take that at face value.

 

NOW in their 20's, without saying if he's asking for now/2016 or filing a prior year return and how long ago. At 20 or 21 or 22 or 23, being a student or not would matter a LOT if the older brother qualified as a QC of his parents, which is what the OP would like.

[jklcpa]

40 minutes ago, Lion EA said:

NOW in their 20's, without saying if he's asking for now/2016 or filing a prior year return and how long ago. At 20 or 21 or 22 or 23, being a student or not would matter a LOT if the older brother qualified as a QC of his parents, which is what the OP would like.

OMG, really?  Again, please stop with the hypotheticals and reading things into this that no one said ever.

First, the fact is that the OP said the older son made $11K in 2015.  Take that as a fact that she (yes, the OP is a SHE) is asking about a 2015 return.

And second, again, whether or not the older son a student is irrelevant. He can NOT be a qualifying child of the parents because he didn't live with the parents, and he can NOT be a qualifying relative because he exceeded the gross income limitation.

[Lion EA]

I'm happy that you're smart enough to not have to read in that the OP is a she and the brother is not a student and 25 matters for EIC with a QC (it does?) and just know all those things.  I do not, and that's why I post.  I'm not as smart as you and am trying to be educated and do not understand why you're being so snippy to me with your sarcastic Huh? and "file on his own" means Single (I file on my own and am married, so I do need to learn) and other pronouncements.  If you're not going to explain why, then yell at me privately instead of in front of the whole group.  Why are my questions to try to understand just hypotheticals, but your pronouncements are your skill at reading between the lines and are to be taken at "face value"?  Yes, I saw the 2015, but if OP (I didn't know that Schiralli was a female name; I thought it was the last name of the CPA posting) is dealing with the living situation for the first time on the 2015 return, them maybe the sons lived with M&D for more than half the year or older son, if a student, is away for school, or....  If son graduated in May 2015 (I know that's hypothetical and you, of course, know the actual, but how will I know until you tell me?) and was injured months later as Ms. Schiralli said, then when did the boys move in together?  I can understand some of what you say about QC vs. QR, but I don't understand things like why "boys are in their 20s...At that age, being a student or not wouldn't matter."  I'm sorry my grasp of multiple generations doesn't measure up to your standards.

[jklcpa]

Well, this will take the thread further off-topic, and I apologize to the membership for doing that since that is what I was trying to avoid, but I will answer Lion here.

I'm most certainly not smarter than some on here, and when I feel unsure or want to double check myself on something, especially in a topic with a lot of disagreement, I may look to reference materials before posting. I don't try to make pronouncements, but try to boil down the answers from only the facts that were given by the OP, in this case it was only 2 posts.  My answers are usually short and have a matter-of-fact tone, or if I don't have a lot of time I'll try to at least post a link to something that may say it better than I could anyway.

Ms Schiralli also said that she gets tears in her eyes each year she prepares these returns, so the accident and life-changing injuries were sustained some prior year.  So yes, sometimes we have to extrapolate from the information actually given to get to the actual fact pattern and the correct answers.

Truly my "huh?" was because I didn't understand what you were even getting at with that particular post of yours, and your next one was a list of questions that were mostly related to the OP's issues until you got to HOH and the filing status issue, and I answered each of those in a matter-of-fact tone until your last where I then asked that you not go into other scenarios in order to limit this discussion to answering the OP's question. If you took those answers to be anything other than matter-of-fact, then you read something into my tone that wasn't there. I'm simply trying to keep the discussions on our forum more on topic since there have been complaints in the past about many topics that wander off, and yet here we are again, even with these last posts that are trying to take it astray

If you or anyone have other questions or scenarios unrelated to the OPs fact pattern regarding dependency exemptions, the EIC, or any other tax subject that you would like to learn more about, you are always able to start a new topic of your own.

With that being said, we need to get this thread back on topic.
 

[Pacun]

I do apologize to LION. I think the original poster left some information out and we had to read between the lines, which contributed to the confusion. I also read (between the lines) that the accident happened at least in 2014, that the brothers were not full time students, and that the preparer wished that the parents would claim both children (never thought that EIC was more beneficial to this family, which by the way is well deserved for the caring older brother).

When situations like this happen, we need KC with the ice bucket contest. We are happy family but that contest is needed sometimes.

[RitaB]

19 hours ago, openmind said:

The disabled child would be a qualifying relative for the parents since he does not live with them.  The disabled child is a qualifying child for the brother since he does live with him and the disabled child does not pay more than half of his own support.  A qualifying child cannot be a qualifying relative, so the brother claims the dependency exemption and not the parents.

1)  I want to welcome openmind, who totally nailed his or her first post.   I hope you stick around; we need you. 

2)  That was off topic, and I am one of the worst offenders, it's true. Squirrel.

 

[Gail in Virginia]

[schirallicpa]

wow - I guess I don't feel like such a dummy asking the question that I did after all the subsequent conversation regarding the situation.

And I actually mis-spoke in the first post.  The disabled brother is older.  The younger brother lives with him and helps him out.  The younger brother is 27.  He earned 11500 during the year.  I filed his return as single.  I put the disabled child on the parents return.  He had a very small income.  

But - if the disabled brother was younger, would the older brother be able to claim him for EIC???  I did not consider that when I did the return.

 

[Gail in Virginia]

If the older brother is totally and permanently disabled, age doesn't matter. 

[Pacun]

Yes it matters. Dependent has to be younger.

[jklcpa]

13 minutes ago, Pacun said:

Yes it matters. Dependent has to be younger.

From this IRS page:

Quote

Age Test for Qualifying Child with a Disability. There is no age limit and the child does not have to be younger than you if the qualifying child is permanently and totally disabled.

And then below that are the rules that define "disability".

[Pacun]

Cool.

That's good to know. I don't have any disabled clients.

So, IEC should be in the game in this situation.