My ex and I share joint custody of our son, how do I claim child care expenses?
My ex and I have total joint custody of our son. Taxcut is telling me I cannot claim a single penny of my childcare expenses of him if I am not the custodial parent – IE: having him MORE than 50% of the year. Well, we have him equally 50% of the time. Who has him that 1 extra day of the 365 days is pretty much down to random chance. My ex gets to claim him as a dependent this year as per our custody agreement, which I assume would make her the ‘custodial parent’ of the year – but now I have 00 worth of deductible expenses I cannot claim? Is this true? I paid as much for his childcare as she did, but why do I not get to claim it, and is there a way around it? I’m not looking to steal the deduction from her, I just want to claim my HALF of the 00 we paid in expenses.
Tagged with: 365 days • childcare expenses • custodial parent • custody agreement • deductible expenses • joint custody • random chance • taxcut
Filed under: General Joint Care
You need to deduct the time the child is in Day Care, while in each of your possession, from the total time, and you need to be keeping a very detailed record in order to take the claim. Joint physical custody does not always mean exactly equal time, life just doesn’t work out that way. You might be an our lack, or an hour early, picking up the child. True joint physical custody is Bird Nest Custody.
http://icanhaz.com/BirdNestCustody
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when it comes to determining which parent claims the child when it is very much 50/50 the parent with the higher income claims the child
Chance or not, you add up the nights and whoever is more is the custodial parent. (I’ve yet to see one closer than a about 10 days or so myself.) The custodial parent gets the Child Care Credit (and all other tax benefits) and the other gets nada without a Form 8332. With the 8332 they get the exemption and Child Tax Credit ONLY. All other tax benefits remain with the custodial parent.
I can only be exactly 50-50 once every 4 years and in that case, the highest AGI "wins" status as the custodial parent.
You both can’t claim. You’ll have to come to some kind of compromise, just like for who gets to claim him. The person who claims him should also claim the child care expenses for that year. I wouldn’t try claiming child care expenses in the years when you aren’t claiming the child.
And just so you know, you can’t claim the whole $8400 (or even $4200) anyway. The annual maximum is $3000 per child for child care. And you only get back 20-35% of it back. The max you can receive is $1,050 per child (3000x.35). And that’s if your income is less than $15,000. If your income is over $43,000, your child care credit rate is 20%. So if whoever claims him claims the child care, they will receive between $600-$1050, out of the $8400 you paid.