If you’re unmarried, pay most of your home’s costs, and your child lives with you most of the year, file as head of household, not single. You get a bigger standard deduction and more income taxed at the lowest rates. If you’ve filed as single before, amend recent returns to get back what you overpaid.
Take a single mom who earns $55,000, has one child, and has checked the single box for years. By our math, head of household would cut her federal income tax by roughly $1,000 a year.
The status pays off because its standard deduction is 50% larger than a single filer’s, and its 10% and 12% brackets stretch further before the 22% rate starts.
You qualify if you’re unmarried on December 31, you pay more than half your household costs, and a qualifying person, usually your child, shares your home more than half the year. Rent or mortgage interest, property taxes, utilities, repairs, and groceries all count as household costs.
These situations qualify too.
- If your spouse moved out before July 1 and your child lives with you, you count as unmarried while still legally married, as long as you file your own return.
- A grown child you claim as a dependent qualifies you if they share your home more than half the year, and time away at college counts as time at home.
- A parent you claim as a dependent doesn’t have to live with you, as long as you cover more than half the cost of their home, including a nursing home, for the whole year.
- A sibling, grandparent, or in-law you claim as a dependent qualifies you only if they share your home more than half the year.
Divorced and separated parents can’t both file as head of household through the same child. Only the parent the child spent more nights with during the year qualifies, even if the other parent claims the child as a dependent.
If you qualified in earlier years, file an amended return, Form 1040-X, for each one. You can claim a refund on a return for at least three years after you filed it, so the mom above can still recover three years of overpaid tax.
Before your next return, spend five minutes with the IRS’s free filing status tool and file under the status it gives you.
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