What this line means
How long each qualifying child lived with you during the tax year. To claim the Earned Income Credit with a qualifying child, that child must have lived with you in the United States for more than half the year — at least 183 days. 1 You enter the number of days for each child listed on this form. Temporary absences for school, medical care, or military service count as time lived with you.
Does this apply to you?
- You are reclaiming the EIC after disallowance and you have a qualifying child
- You had a child living with you for more than half the year in your main home in the United States
- You had a temporary separation from your child (school, summer camp, medical treatment) but the child’s main home was still with you
Easy to overlook
Temporary absences still count as living with you If your child was away at school, in the hospital, at summer camp, or on a temporary visit with the other parent, the IRS considers the child to have lived with you during that time. 1 Many filers undercount the days because they subtract every night the child slept somewhere else. IRS Publication 596 — Earned Income Credit
A child born or died during the year gets special treatment A child born alive at any point during the tax year is treated as having lived with you for the entire year, even if born on December 31. 2 The same applies to a child who died during the year — that child is treated as having lived with you for the full year. IRS Form 8862 Instructions — Information To Claim Certain Credits After Disallowance
Watch out for this
Counting the days wrong when parents share custody. The IRS uses the child’s main home as the deciding factor. If the child lived with you from January through July and with the other parent from August through December, you have the majority of nights and meet the residency test. But if the split is close to 50/50, you need to count actual nights carefully — the parent with more nights claims the child for EIC.
Footnotes
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IRS Publication 596, Earned Income Credit. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p596.pdf ↩ ↩2
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IRS Form 8862 Instructions, Information To Claim Certain Credits After Disallowance. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8862 ↩