Taxes and Claiming Head of Household

To the best of my knowledge you cannot file as head of household because you are not paying the household expenses. Your mother on the other hand may be able to file as head of household.

First, let me say I'm not an accountant or a CPA. But there is a qualifier for filing Head of Household that says you have to have paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for a year.

Here is the specific IRS chapter on HOH:

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p501/ar02.html#en_US_publ...#

Here is a calculator for determining if you pay half the cost of keeping up a home for a year:

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch02.html#en_US_publi...#

I filed HOH when I was a single mom on my own and it did save me quite a bit on taxes, but I had my own place. Good luck.

With you living with your parents I don't think you can. Usually head of household is for the person who's name is on the house so to speak. When I lived with my single dad - eventhough I was married & my hubby lived there too, my dad was able to claim head of house hold. I did pay him for some bills and bought food, but I was attending school & he was happy to help me because he knew I was paying out so much for school expences. So he covered most of the bills.

I did look it up at IRS.gov (Publication 501)... You may be able to file as head of household if you meet all the following requirements.

You are unmarried or “considered unmarried” on the last day of the year.

You paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for the year.

A “qualifying person” lived with you in the home for more than half the year (except for temporary absences, such as school). However, if the “qualifying person” is your dependent parent, he or she does not have to live with you. See Special rule for parent , later, under Qualifying Person.

They go into more deal then I copied... so if you need more info you can visit the IRS.gov site. They also have a spread sheet you can look at to try to figure out if you pay the 1/2 or more in home expenses... which includes rent/morgage, property taxes, home/morgage insurance, utilities, repairs/maint, food, and other household expences.

You said that you pay your mom rent or help out only when you can afford to... does this equal 1/2 the yearly cost to maintain the house? If not - eventhough you are taking care of the child you don't qualify. Instead you do qualify for the dependent addition, child credits & if income is low enough, Earned Income Credit.

Good luck - personnaly, I wouldn't claim Head of Household unless I meet the standards... I wouldn't want to go through an audit & be found guilty of tax fraud, plus the pentaly & interest can be harsh. Just as you have the right to go back 7 yrs so do they... and charge interest from the day you filed which can add up fast. I have seen guy were I worked pay out over $5000 because they didn't file for a 2 or 3 years & got caught... if they would have filed they would have only owed about $500 a year.

in order to claim head of household (and I'm doing this from memory) in your situation, you would have to provide more than 50% of the support for the household. Your parents on the other hand, may be able to claim it. check out what publication 17 has to say about it.

Hi S C,

I am afraid that rent does have something to do with being able to claim head of household. To able to qualify for head of household, you have to be paying more than half of costs for keeping up a home and that includes rent, utilities, food etc. If you pay your mother money regularly for household bills you might be able to start claiming it. You might qualify for the earned income credit and you would qualify for the child tax credit as long as it lasts. You can look up the irs website and type in head of household in the search mode and it will give you the web page that has all the rules for claiming that. Hope this helps a little even though it is probably not what you are wanting to hear.