special needs adult daughter and taxes

[Steerpike]

My adult daughter is special needs and I am her court appointed guardian/conservator. Any Idea how I enter her on my tax forms and what the deduction is?

[W_HAMILTON]

1. What program are you using?

Usually, programs like TurboTax walk you through all that pretty clearly. Or are you trying to do it yourself with maybe one of the free-file programs that don't walk you through it quite so well?

EDIT: I doubt this will help you with your specific question, but it may answer some others you may have or provide you with some information you didn't already know when it comes to claiming a special needs child as a dependent and other tax benefits you may be able to claim: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3966.pdf

Note: some states also provide their own tax benefits in such situations, so you may want to check on that as well.

[pnwest]

2. She is a dependent and you should

see $500 “other dependent credit” as long as she doesn’t earn more than $4400 per year (not knowing how special needs she is, assuming maybe she might have a small part time job). Any disability pay she receives would not be taxable. If you are not married you could file as head of household to receive 1.5 x the single deduction.

Depending on the laws in your state - if you are receiving state pay to be her caregiver, that pay might be excluded from income tax but still be able to count towards earned income credit.

[IbogaProject]

3. some of social security is exempt

I think the first 25,000 per year of social security is exempt from federal tax.