How to handle College earnings/W2 in 2017 tax return?

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How to handle College earnings/W2 in 2017 tax return?

Thanks for your replies to my postings. As my son is in Maryland college, He received W2 for summer earnings/Research assistant work. His earning was less than standard deduction for 2017. How do I report this in 2017 tax return?

  1. Claiming him as dependent in my tax return and attach his W2
  2. Filing his own 1040 2017 return

Which one work better?

Thanks for sharing.

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@MDRI

Yoir kiddo needs to file his OWN tax return.

You can still claim him as a dependent on yours assuming you provided the bulk of his support and he is under 24. But his income wouldn’t go on your return.

I don’t know of any filing way where you would include HIS W2 on YOUR tax return.

But I’m not a tax expert. Once my kids had jobs…they filed their own returns, with some help from us initially.

@BelknapPoint can you elaborate?

3

Does the W-2 indicate that federal income taxes were withheld? (i.e. is there a number in Box 2?) If so, then your son may want to file his own income tax return in order to get back any refund that he is due.

(ETA: you can still claim his as a dependent, assuming he meets all the dependency requirements)

4

May as well file to get back the withholdings.

5

Option 1: you can claim him as a dependent, if he meets all the requirements, but you cannot report his earned income on your tax return. You would not attach his W-2 to your tax return.

Option 2: if his income is less than his standard deduction, he generally doesn’t have to file a tax return, but he may want to anyway if there was any tax withheld from his wages, which he would be entitled to through a tax refund.

6

Ok…now that @BelknapPoint has clarified…I’ll express my opinion.

Your kid has a job. I would suggest he do his tax return and submit it. If this is his only income, can do a 1040EZ which has very few questions on it. It takes all of 15 minutes to complete…if that. And he should be able to free file it.

7

And filing a return, even with $0 owed in taxes, might make things easier in future years. He can use the DRT when filing FAFSA, he can use the tax return as proof of prior income, as proof of residence. My daughter just applied for a new driver’s license and she has absolutely nothing sent to her current address. A copy of a tax return was listed as one of the documents she could have used.