A child may meet the relationship, age, residency, support, and joint return tests to be a qualifying child of two individuals, however only one of them can treat the child as a qualifying child for the purpose of claiming the Earned Income Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the Other Dependent Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, the Credit for Child and Dependent Care Expenses, the Head of Household filing status, and the exclusion from income for dependent care benefits.
If they aren't able to agree on who will claim the child, here are the tiebreaker rules they will need to apply to determine which individual can claim a child:
- If only one of the individuals is the child's parent, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the parent.
- If the parents file a joint return together and can claim the child as a qualifying child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the parents.
- If the parents do not file a joint return together but both parents claim the child as a qualifying child, the IRS will treat the child as the qualifying child of the parent with whom the child lived for the longer period of time during the year. If the child lived with each parent for the same amount of time, the IRS will treat the child as the qualifying child of the parent who had the higher adjusted gross income (AGI) for the year.
- If no parent can claim the child as a qualifying child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the individual who had the highest AGI for the year.
- If a parent can claim the child as a qualifying child but no parent does so claim the child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of the individual who had the highest AGI for the year, but only if that individual's AGI is higher than the highest AGI of any of the child's parents who can claim the child. If the child's parents file a joint return with each other, this rule can be applied by dividing the parents' combined AGI equally between the parents.
Additional Information:
IRS: Publication 501 - Dependents, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information