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Brother support sister and niece


Pacun

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Brother supports sister and niece. All live in the same household. Brother makes 55K (all w-2) and sister makes nothing, no one else lives in the household. Niece is only 2 years old, can he get child tax credit?

According to instructions and flow chart for line 6C the answer is yes.

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>>According to instructions and flow chart for line 6C<<

Although nothing in the original post argues against it, there are several unanswered questions in that flowchart. These include whether the child is self-supporting, citizenship, and whether the taxpayer is a dependent himself. The instructions also have additional requirements that have not been addressed, concerning tiebreakers and separated parents.

It may be that pacun already knows the answers to these questions, but we have no reason to assume the answer is yes.

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Come on, Jainen, the guy makes $55,000, and we are supposed to ask if he is a dependent? No way can he make that much and be anyone's dependent.

The Niece is 2 years old, and we are supposed to ask if she is self-supporting? I think if she was a famous child star Pacun might have mentioned that. After all, he did clearly say the the "Brother supports sister and niece."

The only thing in your post that I see as valid questions are the issues of citizenship and [hinted at] whether the father of the child has any claim. And since we all know Pacun here, it seems to me safe to assume he has considered those issue.

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>>The only thing in your post that I see as valid questions are the issues of citizenship and [hinted at] whether the father of the child has any claim<<

Sure, I'm feeling a bit pedantic today. Pacun has a good reputation on this board for posing important questions in a serious way. But in the exact terms of his post I see the kind of question a client might ask, with many elements left out.

It is common to ignore a child's income, especially if it is from a trust fund or non-taxable Social Security. And it is even more common for family members to delete mention of the absent parent. Although the mother doesn't have any income, before I answered the question I would still want to know if she is filing a return or Form 8332.

So I repeat my caution. Just because only one thing is being asked, if the answer depends on many things you can't assume the rest.

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The point of citizenship is a good one, but illegal children with ITIN get $1000 as child tax credit or additional tax credit.

Last time, I prepared a 1040 for a married couple and a child, all of them had ITINs, the IRS sent a letter because I didn't claim the child tax credit and additional child tax credit. I called the IRS and they asked me to amend the return and the parents got the $1,000 credit.

For clarification, the father is not involved at all either because he does not file US taxes, he is not in the US or both. Support is not an issue.

I am also assuming the uncle qualifies for HH and the child tax credit.

We also need to post more questions to this board since we should clarify a lot of issues before next tax season.

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I guess we all tend to occasionally leave out obvious factors when posing questions, simply because WE already know that answer, and don't want to make the question too long. But it's a valid point you raise, Jainen. Although many of us are old friends on this board or the old one, and I do think that we can cut just a little slack when reading a post from someone we know to be competent, still the posts are also going to be read by others who may be much newer and greener. So it's a good thing to remember when posting that we should mention all the 'critical' factors which we know, for the sake of not confusing those newbies.

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