Taxes and Joint Custody

Typically, unless the court order spells it out differently, whomever has the child more claims the child (from what I have seen).

My ex and I had 50/50 legal custody but I had placement (and had him even when it was his visitation time most of the time). It was never a question, I was his primary parent and paid for mostly everything (received very minimal support). I claimed him.

I think to claim HOH you have to claim at least one child (but I don't know that for sure).

You can't claim HOH unless you're claiming a dependent.

This should be spelled out in your divorce agreement. If it's not, every other year seems to be the norm for truly 50/50. If the child actually lives with one parent more than the other and there is no written agreement, the IRS considers the parent with whom the child spent more time to be the custodial parent. If both claim, there will be an audit.

The IRS is pretty clear as to who is the custodial parent even in joint custody cases:

"Custodial parent and noncustodial parent. The custodial parent is the parent with whom the child lived for the greater number of nights during the year. The other parent is the noncustodial parent."

"Equal number of nights. If the child lived with each parent for an equal number of nights during the year, the custodial parent is the parent with the higher adjusted gross income."

If the custodial parent (the one having more nights) waives claiming the child for a year, that waiver has to be filed in writing via a standard form that gets filed with his or her return.

For the year that my SD lived literally 6 months with us and 6 months with her mother, we both ran our numbers with and without her. Her mother stood to gain more with claiming her, so we let her claim her but she then had to pay us back what we calculated as our share.

More info:

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p504/ar02.html#en_US_2012...#

It's in my divorce papers that I claim our daughter every year. It's about 60/40 with our time share, maybe even 55/45

Joint custody, I'm the residential parent with 66% time on paper, more than that in real life. (his choice not to take summer and txgiving vacations).

I claim our boys every year on taxes. It's in our divorce judgment.

As I understand it, you can't claim Head of Household without a qualifying dependent.

I have always claimed Single, Head of Household. My son lives with M. more than 6 months out of the year and I pay for more than 50% of his expenses.

Some people trade off alternating years, but I always went by the IRS guidelines. I NEVER agreed for my ex husband to claim my son because I had him at least 67% of the time. My ex basically made a career out of getting child support lowered. He took M. to court wanting the right to claim our son and it never happened.

Unless you have another qualifying dependent, if you sign the form for your ex to claim your son, you cannot file as Head of Household.

I would contact a tax preparer to advise you.
H & R Block has always been great to M. as far as asking simple questions without charging M.. The IRS is another resource.

Ask the IRS early before they get slammed with filing questions.

Best wishes.

Generally people switch. We have four so I got the oldest and the youngest every year.

My son is going through this issue and the IRS told him it doesn't matter what the court documents say. The deciding factor is who has the child the most? How many nights did she sleep at your house and how many at dad's house. Which ever parent had her the most nights gets the tax deduction.

Call the IRS and ask them.

We J. went through this! Search tax calculators and punch in numbers for both of you for a rough estimate. We did, all sorts of combinations as to whether he claims the kids or I, how many... etc.

In the end, he makes so much more money that he hits the AMT tax rate and claiming the kids would mean nothing. M. claiming the kids means that I get a return for child credits... so... we agreed I always claim the kids. It's better that either of us get money for the kids than to J. throw it at the government.
I can't find the easy one we used but I will message it to you or edit this post when I do but for now I found this one:

http://www.hrblock.com/free-tax-tips-calculators/index.html

It's J. a quick check... don't depend entirely on it! Best thing,absolutely is to ask a tax person, obviously. But if you are like us and didn't, you can check it out yourself. In our case, since he hits the Alternative Minimum Tax rate, it doesn't matter if he files Single or HOH. So that gives M. the HOH and he'll do single. It's what makes sense for us. But I know for a fact that he can't claim HOH unless he has the kids a majority of the time so I don't think he can do HOH if your divorce papers say 60/40.