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When you file your tax return, you must check one of the following filing statuses: Single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, head of household or qualifying widow(er). Who qualifies to file a return as a head of household, which is more favorable than single?<\/p>\n
To qualify, you must maintain a household, which for more than half the year, is the principal home of a \u201cqualifying child\u201d or other relative of yours whom you can claim as a dependent (unless you only qualify due to the multiple support rules).<\/p>\n
A qualifying child?<\/strong><\/p>\n A child is considered qualifying if he or she:<\/p>\n If a child\u2019s parents are divorced, the child will qualify if he meets these tests for the custodial parent \u2014 even if that parent released his or her right to a dependency exemption for the child to the noncustodial parent.<\/p>\n A person isn\u2019t a \u201cqualifying child\u201d if he or she is married and can\u2019t be claimed by you as a dependent because he or she filed jointly or isn\u2019t a U.S. citizen or resident. Special \u201ctie-breaking\u201d rules apply if the individual can be a qualifying child of (and is claimed as such by) more than one taxpayer.<\/p>\n Maintaining a household <\/strong><\/p>\n You\u2019re considered to \u201cmaintain a household\u201d if you live in the home for the tax year and pay over half the cost of running it. In measuring the cost, include house-related expenses incurred for the mutual benefit of household members, including property taxes, mortgage interest, rent, utilities, insurance on the property, repairs and upkeep, and food consumed in the home. Don\u2019t include items such as medical care, clothing, education, life insurance or transportation.<\/p>\n Special rule for parents <\/strong><\/p>\n Under a special rule, you can qualify as head of household if you maintain a home for a parent of yours even if you don\u2019t live with the parent. To qualify under this rule, you must be able to claim the parent as your dependent.<\/p>\n Marital status<\/strong><\/p>\n You must be unmarried to claim head of household status. If you\u2019re unmarried because you\u2019re widowed, you can use the married filing jointly rates as a \u201csurviving spouse\u201d for two years after the year of your spouse\u2019s death if your dependent child, stepchild, adopted child, or foster child lives with you and you \u201cmaintain\u201d the household. The joint rates are more favorable than the head of household rates.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re married, you must file either as married filing jointly or separately, not as head of household. However, if you\u2019ve lived apart from your spouse for the last six months of the year and your dependent child, stepchild, adopted child, or foster child lives with you and you \u201cmaintain\u201d the household, you\u2019re treated as unmarried. If this is the case, you can qualify as head of household.<\/p>\n We can answer questions if you\u2019d like to discuss a particular situation or would like additional information about whether someone qualifies as your dependent.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2021<\/em><\/p>\n <\/body> When you file your tax return, you must check one of the following filing statuses: Single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, head of household or qualifying widow(er). Who qualifies to file a return as a head of household, which is more favorable than single? To qualify, you must maintain a household, which for more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,10],"tags":[8,11,12],"class_list":["post-15399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-individual-tax","category-news","tag-articles","tag-news","tag-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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