So… it’s been over a month since I e-filed my taxes, with no return for me. I go and check the status and apparently my return was rejected because my parents claimed me as a dependant.
Now the “help” TurboTax offers online assumes you’re the one who f*cked up, but in truth I didn’t. My parents did claim me as a dependant and now it won’t let me file my taxes. So I’m very confused.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
You (one person) cannot be two people’s dependent unless it’s like a shared custody kind of thing, I think. How old are you? Did your mom pay for more than half of your living expenses for the year? If not, I don’t think she should be able to claim you as a dependent. If so, maybe you just can’t file online. Can you print out the docs and send it in? Did you make more than the amount required for filing taxes?
OTOH, I could be totally wrong. Just trying to help! 
You are probably going to have to tell your parents to file an ammended return to get this straightened out. That should fix that. Then, call a lawyer and sue the shit of of them for mental anguish.
Go to this link: http://www.irs.gov/
After you are there, click on “Where is my refund” and fill in the blanks.
Basically unless there’s weird circumstances, if somebody is claiming you as a dependant, you do not file, since they pay your taxes and get your refund (in a sense, it works out differently though).
WRONG!!! If you have income over a certain amount you must file. If you had taxes withheld from your pay, you must file to get a refund.
However, if your parents claim you as a dependent (meaning they provided over 50% of your support during the year), then you cannot claim yourself as a dependent on your own return, which means that you will pay more in taxes.
Well that’s what I meant by weird circumstances, unless you’re a student or some other special status, either you don’t make enough money to live on and your parents pay for you and file you as a dependant and include your income on their taxes, or you make enough money to not be a dependant and file separately. I suppose the two $ thresholds are different so there are the people in between, but I think in the majority of cases this holds true.
Still wrong. Whether or not his parents claim him as a dependent, he has to include his income on his own taxes. If his income is low enough, he doesn’t have to file at all (but still should if any money has been withheld), but his income would never be included on his parent’s taxes.
Incidentally, the dependency thing isn’t optional: if his parents meet the criteria for him being a dependent (and it’s pretty easy to do so for students and several other classes), then they can take the dependency exemption or not, but he CANNOT, even if his parents don’t.
So either his parents claimed the dependency correctly, in which case he just needs to file a return without the dependency claim, or they did not, in which case the parents need to file an amended return and he can refile his old one.
Go to the IRS.GOV site, and look up Publication 17. This is basically the hyper-interested layman’s version of the tax code; it’s about 150 pages and covers almost all tax scenarios in detail. Everyone should know about pub 17; it answers most tax questions, with examples, flow-charts, and everything, and it’s relatively easy to follow.
Ok sorry about the misinformation then. However, now I’m confused. For years when I was a student and made pennies, my parents accountant collected all my W-2s and 1099’s and included them on my parents taxes as income, and then used my personal expenses in their itemized deductions. However the first year over a certain threshold ($10K a year?) he said I had to file separately.
It might depend on how the income was made. If it’s work study or somesuch, there might be ways to consider it scholarship income, which your parents might be able to deduct if they paid for your schooling. Or the rules could have been different then, or it could be a state thing.
…
OK, I checked Pub 17. Turns out you’re at least partly right – there is a way to include the child’s income on the parent’s return. But the income can only be interest and dividends (not wages), the child has to be under 14, and there’s a bunch of other limitations. It’s basically meant for kids with trust funds and bank accounts, I think, so you don’t have to file for your 2-year old’s college savings account. I don’t see any other way to do it (although it’s possible there might be one – I DO NOT do tax stuff for a living, but I had some training a while back).
These rules change all the time (the defintion of a dependent child changed from 2004 to 2005, for example), so it’s quite likely things were different then.
Still not quite right. My kids recieved a large one time gift of a savings account from my father. To do their taxes I had to have mine done first, and then they were taxed at the same tax rate I was. This is to prevent a rich parent from gifting large amounts of money to a minor child to avoid paying tax (since a 4 year old kid we can assume has no job or other income*) to avoid paying tax on interest income.
I always had to file a separate form for each of my kids. Did not matter if they worked or not, the interest income was enough. They were still my dependents, I claimed them, but I still had to file for them.
Back to the OP, if your parents can claim you as a dependant you need to go back into the Turbo Tax interview and change your answer to the question “can you be claimed as a dependant on someone else’s taxes?”. As had been said before if they are incorrect, then they need to go back and admend their return.
*Yeah I know about child actors, most kids don’t have earned income at 4
Get a professionl Income Tax Preparer to go over BOTH your and your parents tax form submissions for 2005 Taxes.
Do Not repeat Do Not rely on the widely advertised nation wide concerns that train help for the tax season.
Employ a GOOD small firm that mainly does year around filings for businesses also does the personal taxes for the owners.
It can avoid the problems of cross filings when he does the taxes for both you and your parents.