My daughter was born in March and lived only 9 days. Can I claim her as a dependent?The answer is yes. The IRS (the United States federal tax authority) allows you to claim a dependent for the full year even if it was born, lived and died for only a small portion of the year. What about children born still, who never lived outside the womb nor breathed this air?
We have a birth certificate, social security number and death certificate -- she died after 9 days and never left the hospital. Do I claim her as a dependant?
I'm asking because it is common to adjust your income tax withholding via form W-4 to increase the number of allowances when you know a child will be born in the current tax year. Counting chickens before they hatch, what if one doesn't hatch?
That happened to my friends. Twice in a row, the second almost exactly one year after the first. Still births. Stillborns. Dead babies.
I'm not implying that the tax impact is important to them. Missing their children is the tragedy. Who cares about W-4 allowances?
What is horrifying is that the question about a baby who lived 9 days is top of the tax support question and answer forum. Someone out there is still grieving their child who survived birth and made it 9 days but never even left the hospital.
Grief is a long, strange process and I can't imagine sitting down with tax forms -- usually a sobering, unsentimental process -- and being hit afresh with the reminder that I am one-child-less and now stuck in a bureaucratic doldrum because of it.
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