<p>I know I’ll get an answer faster here than anywhere else. DD earned $3780 last year…total. She had only $18 in federal withholding. She is in the PC and I’m in charge of filing her taxes. If she is under the income amount for filing, I’m not going to bother. What IS the amount? Did she earn a low enough amount??? She was a full time student until Aug 31.</p>
<p>Suggest you go to [Internal</a> Revenue Service](<a href=“http://www.irs.gov%5DInternal”>http://www.irs.gov), they have a FAQ section that walks you through a series of questions that determines whether or not you need to file. takes about 2 minutes. Be sure to check your state/local filing requirements as they may differ from the feds.</p>
<p>She does not have to file state income taxes as she had no state taxes taken OUT of her pay…unless she is required to file a federal tax return. I think she is below the threshold. </p>
<p>Edit…I went to the IRS link above. The FAQ section for dependents refers me to Table 2, with a link that spills me back to the FAQ page.</p>
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<p>Guess she does NOT have to file. Hope I’m reading this correctly.</p>
<p>I would file even if she does not have to file. She can file online for free (TurboTax), it will take very little time (about 30 to 45 minutes), and it will ensure that she will get a refund if she is entitled to one.</p>
<p>She may not actually owe $18 in taxes, which means about 30 to 45 minutes of work would result in an $18 refund, or about $25 an hour. Most college students would jump at a one hour gig that pays $25 an hour!</p>
<p>The other thing is that what she learns by filing taxes today will help her in the future. Until she is married and has a husband to do her taxes for her, she’ll end up doing them on her own, and this experience will help her out.</p>
<p>You can Google IRS Free File for online programs that let you file taxes for free.</p>
<p>(Since she is in the peace corps, she may not be able to file them. But still, $18 refund for 30 minutes worth of work is well worth it, and something my parents would have done for me, and something I’ll be doing for my kids when they are older.)</p>
<p>Was the $18 taken from the PC pay or from another job? This reminds me DD hasn’t sent her worksheet yet so we can do her taxes; she was in the PC all year.</p>
<p>BOTW…SHE isn’t going to learn anything filing this year. She’s in the Peace Corps…<em>I</em> will be doing her filing for her (authorized to do so).</p>
<p>Cap…the $18 fed tax deduction was from another job. PC does not take taxes out of the money they pay. The other thing…her actual “income” is probably just a tad less because I haven’t done that PC worksheet…which reduces the amount.</p>
<p>I’m not going to bother filing for her. She already told me not to bother. She will not have to file for 2011 or 2012…as her only “earnings” will be PC earnings and they are very clear in their letter…if that’s it, the kiddo does not have to file. WOOHOO.</p>
<p>She can file in 2013 when hopefully she will have an INCOME of some sort.</p>
<p>My Dad did taxes for me for when I was 6 or 8 or something. I didn’t have a lot of income (interest on savings) but about $5 or $10 did get withheld. He spent the time doing taxes so I’d get a refund on that amount, because he didn’t want a 6 year old to lose any money to the federal government.</p>
<p>At the time, he was a senior executive at a large publically traded company. It’d probably wasn’t worth his time to save $5, but it was part of an important lesson that he was teaching to all of us, and one of his important principals in life.</p>
<p>We’re not big fans of paying the government in our family. We pay all of the taxes that we are owed, but are careful not to pay any taxes that we don’t owe.</p>
<p>Now that I’m the dad, I’ll probably get a chance to file for my little girl’s taxes before too many years go by.</p>
<p>I guess I’m looking at it a little differently, BOTW. DD is in the Peace Corps which means the federal government is paying her way for everything for the next two years. I have no problem with them having an extra $18 in their coffers.</p>
<p>Are you sure she doesn’t qualify for the Making Work Pay Credit? That could be an extra $400 if she qualifies.</p>
<p>She is a dependent of ours this year. I thought you had to be not declared on someone else’s taxes to be eligible for the Making Work Pay Credit.</p>
<p>thumper1 - I made the same decision for S1. His earned income was around $2000 - had about $18 withheld in Federal taxes. Not worth the bother was my executive decision. And you are right about tax credits - not eligible if you can be claimed as a dependent on parents’ tax returns. Just watch the unearned income in situations like this - my son actually exceeded the unearned income threshold a few years back when we made the mistake of putting some money aside for him in a mutual fund in his name. Not only did that cause him to have to file a tax return - big mistake where FA is concerned.</p>
<p>No worries here about UNEARNED income. She had so little of it that the banks were not required to send her an interest statement!</p>
<p>I filed mine every year since I started working at 14… Always got something back.</p>
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<p>Now THAT is a good Dad :-).</p>
<p>An aside…last year this same daughter had to file a CA state return as an out of resident. It cost us more to file the thing than the amount she got back. She was required to file that return last year due to her income (which fortunately was MUCH below the threshold for CA this year). She got back less than $5.</p>
<p>"Until she is married and has a husband to do her taxes for her, "</p>
<p>I guess I should just let that one slide…</p>
<p>Good friends, what if son (my dependent, college fourth year) inherited less than five thousand from deceased’s IRA? And that is his only 2010 income. Unearned income? Well, somebody earned it. Making work count credit? Should he file separate from me?</p>
<p>He should file separately, but you should claim his exemption. You will also therefore be entitled to any of the applicable education credits.</p>
<p>Inheriting it isn’t income. A distribution from it would be. You will receive a 1099R for it. It is unearned income. No making work pay credit. Wouldn’t get it even if it was earned income since he’s your dependent. He needs to declare it on his own return. Exemption on unearned income is not the same as it is for earned.</p>