qbteachmt
Level 15

"Unfortunately, those don't answer the question."

The answer is Maybe. "Receiving child support or alimony doesn’t prevent you from claiming Head of Household as long as you’re paying more than 50% of your household costs from your own income or savings."

The resources help more about the wording, qualifications, references, etc. There are residency tests, support tests, and other determinations to perform.

This looks easy to read:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/child-support-taxes-30263.html

Social Security benefits in the name of a child are treated as belonging to that child and would be part of their computed share of contributing to their own household costs. If there are multiple support streams, then as long as the custodial parent still pays more than the others, that parent can still be HOH for that qualifying child.

Support tests can be found, such as:

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501#en_US_2019_publink1000292527

https://apps.irs.gov/app/vita/content/globalmedia/teacher/worksheet_for_determining_support_4012.pdf

https://www.thebalance.com/head-of-household-filing-status-3193039#the-support-test

And you need to follow the list for qualifying costs, since not everything applies.

https://www.efile.com/irs-head-of-household-tax-filing-status/

 

 

 

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