Has anyone used TurboTax to figure this out? I'm in a similar situation and the software is confusing me.

Just wanted to add some clarity based on my experience as a tax preparer - the key issue here is understanding what "keeping up a home" means for HOH purposes. The IRS defines this as paying more than half the cost of rent, mortgage interest, real estate taxes, insurance on the home, repairs, utilities, and food eaten in the home. Since you're paying 65% of these household maintenance costs, you definitely qualify for HOH with your son as your dependent. However, your girlfriend would need to show she pays more than half of these same household costs to qualify for HOH with your daughter. This is where it gets tricky - you can't both be paying more than half of the same expenses. The child-specific expenses your girlfriend pays (daycare, clothing, medical) are important for determining who can claim the child as a dependent, but they don't count toward the "keeping up a home" test for HOH status. My recommendation: You claim HOH, and your girlfriend should probably file as Single (assuming she can't demonstrate paying more than half of household maintenance costs). You'll both still claim your respective children as dependents and get those tax benefits. Consider consulting a tax professional to review your specific numbers - this is one of those situations where the details really matter for compliance.

Just to clarify something important: the 5 months as a student don't have to be consecutive! My son was in school Jan-Mar, took summer off, then went back Sept-Nov. That still counts as 5 months for the student test. Also, don't forget that if your child provides more than half of their own support, you can't claim them regardless of the other tests. Support includes housing, food, education expenses, medical, clothes, etc. My son's scholarships counted as HIM providing support not ME which messed up my calculations.

I'm confused. The support test is throwing me off. if my son lives with me but pays me $500/month for rent, does that count as HIM supporting himself or ME supporting him since he's living in my house thats worth way more than $500/month?

lol the IRS wants to know EVERYTHING even if u paid $0

The confusion makes total sense! Here's what's happening: Box 1 ($6,725) shows what your school received for tuition, and Box 5 ($3,748) shows scholarships/grants they processed. The $2,977 difference likely represents other financial aid (like loans) that covered the rest. Even though you paid $0 out of pocket, you still need to report this because the IRS uses it to determine if you qualify for education credits and whether any scholarship money is taxable. The good news is since your scholarships ($3,748) are less than your qualified expenses ($6,725), you probably won't owe taxes on the scholarship money. Just enter the numbers as they appear on your 1098-T and let the tax software do the calculations!

If anyone is still following this thread, I just wanted to add that I had a similar issue with TaxAct (not FreeTaxUSA) and RIC foreign income. The solution for me was to make sure I entered the correct country codes for each foreign tax paid rather than using "various" as the country. Once I did that, e-filing worked fine. Maybe try that approach in FreeTaxUSA too? Sometimes these tax software issues have simple workarounds if you get the right guidance.

I just went through this exact same nightmare with FreeTaxUSA and RIC foreign income from my mutual fund investments. After reading through all these suggestions, I want to share what finally worked for me. The key was getting the Form 1116 allocations exactly right. I had foreign income from three different countries through my Vanguard international fund, and FreeTaxUSA kept rejecting my e-file because I was lumping everything together. Here's what I had to do: 1. Separate each country's foreign taxes paid into individual entries rather than using "Various" or combining them 2. Make sure the passive income category was selected correctly for each foreign source 3. Double-check that the foreign tax credit amounts matched exactly with what was on my 1099-DIV The whole process was incredibly frustrating because FreeTaxUSA's error messages were completely unhelpful - they just said "foreign income not supported for e-filing" without explaining what specifically was wrong. But once I got the allocations right, it went through immediately. For anyone still struggling with this, don't give up on FreeTaxUSA if you've already entered everything. The software CAN handle RIC foreign income for e-filing, it's just very picky about how you enter the information.

I'm using TurboTax this year and it keeps asking me what the code in box 14 means. If I put in just a backslash character is that going to cause problems with my filing? Should I just leave it blank instead?

I had the exact same issue with a backslash in box 14 on my W2! I ended up calling my former employer's payroll department and they confirmed it was just a system glitch from when they exported the W2 data. The payroll person told me their software sometimes puts placeholder characters in empty fields instead of leaving them truly blank. She said I could either file with it as-is (since it doesn't affect the actual tax calculations) or they could issue a corrected W2 if I preferred. I chose to just file with it since all my wage and withholding information was correct. My return was accepted without any issues and I got my refund on schedule. If you're using tax software that's asking about the code, you can usually just skip that section or mark it as "other/miscellaneous" since it's clearly not a legitimate tax code. The important thing is that your actual income and tax withholding amounts are accurate.