Does anyone know anything about this

[chibrown01]

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I filed taxes and claimed my little sister. She is dependant on me. I buy her everything, I took out loans for her. She is 17 and a senior in college.

Now for grad school, they won't grant me financial aid bc they say it's not legal for me to claim my lil sis. I filed as head of house hold. No one claimed me.

The grad school needs a letter from a CPA saying it's legal or I need to refile my taxes (and return my tax refund).
Has anyone had an issue like this?? What did you do?

 

[edmadison]

You MAY be ok in this situation. There are fairly well laid out rules in the tax regs to cover this situation. Essentially, if she is truly dependent on you (and no one else) and doesn't have a significant income of her own, you should be fine. It's a little more complicated than this. Call several CPAs and get a estimate of how much it would require to do this (it shouldn't be too much -- a few hundred bucks). Alternatively, you could contact legal aid and see if someone there could help you out for free.


Ed

 

[dpmd]

Not sure if it would make a difference who the legal guardian is (ie. if you are her legal guardian does that make it automatically ok).

Actually checked irs.gov and what you have to do is total all the money used to support her (including any nontaxable welfare kind of payments) and figure out how much money you personally gave of that. If it isn't more than half then you shouldn't have claimed her as a dependent. Where are your parents?