Do we consider our 23 yr old son (8/1991) a family member on FAFSA even if he doesn’t live at home, works a job, and isn’t filed as an exemption on our tax return BUT we provide more than 1/2 of his support and will provide 1/2 his support from July 2015-July 2016? ( he was an accounting/finance major and he asked us to not claim him as an exemption/dependent on our tax return as he wanted to claim himself on his tax return so we don’t claim him as an exemption even though we could)
Please respond
Thank you
I think that you can include him as a FAFSA family member, because he is your child and you will provide more than half of his support between 7/1/15 and 6/30/16.
How can he claim himself if he is not providing over half of his support?
If you rightfully claim him, he could prepare his tax return both ways, file the correct one, and you gift him his increase in tax. (Assuming it is less than or equal to your own tax savings by claiming him as your dependent.
Based on the limited facts provided, it doesn’t sound like the 23 year old son is a qualifying dependent child for purposes of being claimed as an exemption on the parent return. Therefore, he can claim himself as an exemption on his own return, even though he is not providing over half of his own support.
If you could claim your dependent child, but choose not to; your dependent child can not claim his exemption, it is lost. See http://www.irs.gov/publications/p501/ar02.html#en_US_2014_publink1000220858
When did he graduate from college (undergrad)?
Is he in grad school?
Some facts are missing.
No he is not in grad school - he graduated college 6/2013 and he works a part time job but not enough to support himself so we provide more than half of his support now and between 7/1/15 and 6/30/16- so can we include him as a FAFSA family member since he is our child and we provide more than half of his support now and between 7/1/15 and 6/30/16 even if we don’t put him on our tax return as a dependent ( exemption)?
I’m going to punt here. If he were a student…yes. But he is living in his own place. For FAFSA purposes, how,can you count him as a member of YOUR household. He is not a member of your household. He lives someplace else.
ETA…and while tax filing status doesn’t detemine financial,aid status, if your son is NOT on your tax return as a dependent, I would think this would be a verification red flag.
FAFSA doesn’t require that a child be actually living in the same residence, only that the parent(s) provide more than half of the child’s support during the reporting period.
From the FAFSA instructions:
“To determine whether to include children in the household size, the “support” test is used (rather than a residency requirement) because there may be situations in which a parent supports a child who does not live with the parent, especially in cases where the parent is divorced or separated. In such cases, the parent who provides more than half of the child’s support may claim the child in his or her household size.”
Thank you Middkidd. As long as the parents can provide documentation of this support…because I do think it will trigger verification. This would likely mean the son’s earnings, as well as expenses…and the parent actual contributions to his support.
ETA…is this a typos? Because for FAFSA purposes, they will want to know about 2014 for,the upcoming year as well.
Plus…this is predicting your level of support for the future…not sure that is going to fly.
From my limited knowledge doesn’t the child have to be under 24 and a fulltime student to be claimed as a dependent on parent tax return? So I think they could rightfully claim an exemption for him in 2013 because he graduated that year, but not for 2014.
And I agree with 4kidsdad, if the parents (or someone else) is eligible to claim child as a dependent, they cannot claim the exemption for themselves.
No, the child does not have to be under 24 and a full-time student for the parents to claim him as an exemption on their return.
Thank you @madison85, so the support test is all that is needed?
@mommdc I would suggest using the IRS tool, but 19-24 and full-time is generally right.
@madison85, thanks for the dependent tool link, I didn’t know that existed!
The IRS tax forms and FAFSA dependency forms do not have to match and often don’t. You look at the FAFSA instructions and stipulations to make the determination as to whether or not your 23 year old son or anyone else is allowed to be considered a dependent for FAFSA. You do the same using the tax code and regs for tax returns. They are not necessarily going to come out with the same results.
I’m patiently waiting for a clarification on the above statement.
Is the OP providing more than half of the support for 2014?
7/1/15 to 6/30/16 is WAY in the future. You are not going to get financial aid for the 2015-2016 school year based on what you THINK you might provide. Your son could get a full time job.
You could say that about anything when you have to project what is going to happen in the future ! As it stands now -and that is all we can go on - we are providing more than 1/2 our 23 yr old sons support - we don’t have a crystal ball that tells us when he will have a job that will provide him more than 1/2 of his support so we have to go on what we know now.