02/01
On April 7, 2020, the Department issued a return adjustment notice to the Taxpayer for the 2019 tax year that reduced the amount of the refund because it disallowed the Taxpayer’s claim of his child as a dependent. On April 21, 2020, the Taxpayer filed a written protest of the return adjustment notice. The Department follows the federal statutes for determining whether someone is a dependent, though the Department will also follow a court order that allows the party to claim a dependent. The Taxpayer did meet many of the criteria under the federal law to claim his child as a dependent, but did not share the same principal residence as the Taxpayer for more than half of the year. The Taxpayer argued that a court had stated that he could claim the child every other year, but the court orders provided did not grant him the right to claim the child as a dependent on his tax return. Since the Taxpayer could not provide enough evidence that he could claim the child as a dependent, the Hearing Officer ordered the protest denied.