Filing Status and Dependent Tests

For a qualifying child, check relationship, age, residence, support and joint-return conditions. The relationship includes a child, stepchild, eligible foster child, sibling or a descendant of one of them. The age test generally requires a child under 19, or a full-time student under 24, who is younger than the taxpayer or joint-filing spouse. A permanently and totally disabled child can qualify regardless of age. Residence generally means more than half the year, with temporary absences and other exceptions considered.

The qualifying-child support test asks whether the child provided more than half of their own support. It does not generally require the parent to provide more than half. A qualifying relative, by contrast, generally requires the taxpayer to provide more than half of total support and the person’s 2025 gross income to be less than $5,200. The person cannot be anyone’s qualifying child and must satisfy the listed relationship rule or live in the household all year. General dependent, citizenship/residency and joint-return restrictions still apply.

Head of household generally requires the taxpayer to be unmarried or considered unmarried at year end, pay more than half the cost of keeping up the home and have a qualifying person. A qualifying person usually must live in the home more than half the year. A qualifying dependent parent can satisfy a special rule without living with the taxpayer if the taxpayer pays more than half the cost of the parent’s main home.

Household costs include items such as rent, mortgage interest, property taxes, utilities, repairs, home insurance and food consumed in the home. They do not include every dollar of a dependent’s support. Clothing, education, medical care and transportation are not household-maintenance costs for this test. For a married taxpayer considered unmarried, check the separate-return, spouse-absence during the last six months, qualifying-child and household-cost requirements rather than assuming separation alone is enough.

When a child is a qualifying child of more than one person, the tie-breaker rules control competing claims. If only one claimant is a parent, the parent generally has priority. Between parents who do not file jointly, the parent with whom the child lived longer generally prevails; equal residence generally points to the parent with higher AGI. If no parent can claim the child, the highest-AGI eligible person generally prevails. If an eligible parent chooses not to claim, a nonparent must satisfy the special higher-AGI condition.

For divorced or separated parents, a qualifying release by the custodial parent can allow specified dependent-related benefits to the noncustodial parent under the special rule. It does not transfer head-of-household status, earned income credit or dependent-care benefits. The custodial parent is generally determined by nights of residence, not simply by the wording of a custody order. Keep residence, the release and each benefit in separate columns.