by taxesblow » Sun Mar 11, 2012 8:43 pm
My parents claimed me the first tax season after I started getting smart payments and I was livid. The way taxes work is that your parents get a dependent credit for claiming you ($3,700). And if you are a dependent, you don't get deductions on the income you've made, your parents get them. For most college kids, it's usually not a big deal to be claimed until they graduate but when you haven't had taxes taken out the whole time it adds up and not being able to get deductions from it makes it even more. 2010 taxes I had like 10 or 11,000 taxable from SMART. I paid $1,500 in, and was told it would have been close to $300 if I was filing independent. File on your own if you can. This year because its been a full year with SMART and my internship, I had about $36,000 taxable. So I filed on my own and got to deduct a lot of the expenses from my internship so I will hopefully not have to pay in as much. I'm still waiting for them to be finished.. Anyways there's technically a lot of rules for parents claiming kids, but they get swept under the rug when it's going to help them out. :/
My parents claimed me the first tax season after I started getting smart payments and I was livid. The way taxes work is that your parents get a dependent credit for claiming you ($3,700). And if you are a dependent, you don't get deductions on the income you've made, your parents get them. For most college kids, it's usually not a big deal to be claimed until they graduate but when you haven't had taxes taken out the whole time it adds up and not being able to get deductions from it makes it even more. 2010 taxes I had like 10 or 11,000 taxable from SMART. I paid $1,500 in, and was told it would have been close to $300 if I was filing independent. File on your own if you can. This year because its been a full year with SMART and my internship, I had about $36,000 taxable. So I filed on my own and got to deduct a lot of the expenses from my internship so I will hopefully not have to pay in as much. I'm still waiting for them to be finished.. Anyways there's technically a lot of rules for parents claiming kids, but they get swept under the rug when it's going to help them out. :/