Me and my partner live together can we both claim head of household?
Me and my partner are not married and living together. We have 4 children I am claiming one and he is claiming three. Can we both claim head of household?
Best Answer
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Hi tlegrande4, in order to use the Head of Household filing status, you generally need to meet three basic rules: you have to be unmarried or considered unmarried, you must have a qualifying dependent who lived with you more than half of the year, and you must pay more than half the cost of maintaining your home for the year.
In your situation, it sounds like there are two things to consider:
1-Each child can only be the qualifying dependent of one individual. As long as you aren't both claiming the same child as a qualifying person for that filing status, then that could work.
2-You need to have paid over half the cost of keeping up a home. According to IRS Publication 501, allowable costs include mortgage interest or rent payments, utilities, property taxes, property insurance, groceries, and other household items. They don't include health insurance, clothing, or entertainment. It may be difficult for two different people to claim that they each individually paid more than half the cost of keeping up the same home.
The IRS provides a worksheet in Publication 501 (on the top of pg 8) that you can use to determine whether you paid more than half of the cost of keeping up a home.
You can also use the following IRS interactive tool to help you figure out which filing status you qualify to use:
