Can I claim my girlfriend, boyfriend, adult child or parent?

An adult can be your dependent, but only through the qualifying relative route, and it has four tests that all have to be met. The gross income limit is the one that ends most of these questions.

Start by ruling out the other category

A person who is somebody's qualifying child cannot be your qualifying relative. That is the first test rather than a footnote, and it is what sends a nineteen-year-old still in full-time education, or a child living mainly with another parent, down a different path entirely. Claiming dependents sets out the qualifying child rules and the tie-breakers when two people could claim the same person.

The four tests

There are four tests specific to a qualifying relative, and all four have to be met: the person is not a qualifying child, the member of household or relationship test, the gross income test, and the support test. Two more tests reach every dependent, of either kind: the joint return test and the citizen-or-resident test, both covered in claiming dependents. A partner still filing jointly with a spouse fails the first.

The second one has two branches, and only one of them has to hold. Either the person is related to you in one of the listed ways, or they lived with you all year as a member of your household. Which branch you are on decides two things later on: whether the local law condition can reach you, and whether the person can make you head of household.

The income limit that ends most of these

The person's gross income for the year has to be under $5,200. Most of these questions end here, before support is ever considered.

Gross income means income in money, property and services that is not exempt from tax, counted before any deductions. A few months of part-time work clears the limit easily. So does self-employment income, which for a business means receipts minus the cost of goods sold, and rent from a property. Some income is outside it, and a person living on Social Security alone is often well under, which is why parents are the cases that most often survive this test.

Relationship or a full year in your home

Certain relatives qualify without living with you at all: your child, stepchild, foster child or a descendant of any of them; a sibling, half sibling or step sibling; a parent, grandparent or other direct ancestor; a stepparent; a niece or nephew; an aunt or uncle; and a son-in-law, daughter-in-law, father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law or sister-in-law.

An unmarried partner is on none of those lists. For a partner the only route is the household branch, which means living in your home for the entire year, not most of it. A relationship that began in March fails for that year and may qualify for the next one.

The support test, and what to keep

You have to provide more than half of the person's total support for the year. Support means the cost of keeping them: food, lodging, clothing, medical and dental care, education, transportation and similar necessities, with lodging measured by the fair rental value of the space they use.

The other half of the arithmetic catches people out. Money the person spends on their own support counts against you, including savings they draw down and benefits they receive and spend. Keep records that show the two sides: proof of the household, the person's own income statements, and what you actually paid.

What an adult dependent is worth

An adult dependent brings the credit for other dependents, worth $500. It is not the child tax credit and it is not refundable, so it reduces tax you owe and stops there. The child tax credit covers the larger credit an adult cannot unlock.

Filing status is where the real money can be. Head of household carries a standard deduction of $23,625 against $15,750 for a single filer. But the two do not always travel together. Publication 501 is explicit that a person who is your qualifying relative only because they lived with you all year as a member of your household is not a qualifying person for head of household. So a partner can be your dependent and change nothing about your status, while a parent or a sibling can do both. A relative other than a parent also has to have lived with you for more than half the year before they count for head of household; a parent is the one who does not. Filing status has the rest of the conditions.

A parent, and an adult child

A parent is the easiest case, because the relationship branch removes the living-together question entirely. A parent you support can be your dependent while living in their own home, or in a care facility you pay for, and the support test is usually the only real obstacle. A parent can also be the qualifying person for head of household without living with you, which is unusual and worth checking against your own numbers.

An adult child is the mirror image. Once they are past the age conditions for the child credit, or no longer a student, they stop being a qualifying child and land in this route instead, where the income limit applies to them like anyone else. A grown child earning part-time wages is usually over it.

A partner and the local law condition

One further condition attaches to the household branch. If the relationship between you and the person breaks local law at any point during the year, that branch is not met, and the publication's own example is a partner still married to somebody else.

It defeats one test only. Someone who qualifies through the relationship list is never reached by it, so a parent, a sibling or a grandchild is unaffected. If your own situation sits near the edge, the IRS runs an Interactive Tax Assistant that walks the dependent questions in order.