What Are Personal and Dependent Exemptions?

Personal and dependent exemptions were fixed per-person deductions that reduced your taxable income — $4,050 for each taxpayer, spouse, and dependent in 2017, the last year they were available. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act set the exemption amount to $0 beginning in 2018, and the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act signed in 2025 made that change permanent. You cannot claim the deduction on any current or future return, but the legal tests for identifying a dependent are still active and still control several tax credits worth more money than the old exemption ever was.

What the Exemptions Were

Under 26 U.S.C. § 151, the tax code let every individual taxpayer subtract a set dollar amount from gross income — one exemption for yourself, and one for a spouse on a joint return, because each spouse counted as a separate taxpayer.¹²

Dependent exemptions worked the same way, adding one more deduction for each qualifying child or qualifying relative you supported. A family of four filing jointly in 2017 could subtract $16,200 from gross income before any tax was calculated.

Why You Can No Longer Claim Them

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Public Law 115-97) added section 151(d)(5) to the Internal Revenue Code, setting the exemption amount to $0 for tax years 2018 through 2025. The statutory framework stayed on the books; only the dollar figure was zeroed out.¹

That suspension was set to expire after 2025, which would have brought exemptions back for the 2026 tax year. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act closed that door. For 2026 and every year after, personal and dependent exemptions remain at $0, and Form 1040 no longer contains an exemption line.³

Congress roughly doubled the standard deduction to partially offset the loss. For 2026, the standard deduction is $16,100 for single filers and those married filing separately, $32,200 for married couples filing jointly, and $24,150 for heads of household.³

Why Dependent Rules Still Matter

The definitions of “qualifying child” and “qualifying relative” under 26 U.S.C. § 152 are unchanged, and they now do the work of gating tax credits rather than the exemption deduction.⁴ Whether someone counts as your dependent determines your access to:

The Child Tax Credit, worth up to $2,200 per qualifying child for tax year 2025, with up to $1,700 refundable through the Additional Child Tax Credit and inflation adjustments going forward⁵
The Credit for Other Dependents, a nonrefundable credit of up to $500 for a dependent who doesn’t qualify for the Child Tax Credit, phasing out at $200,000 AGI ($400,000 for joint filers)⁵
The Earned Income Tax Credit, where the number of qualifying children changes the credit amount
Head of household filing status, which generally requires a qualifying person in your home for more than half the year⁶
The child and dependent care credit and education credits, both of which require a qualifying dependent⁷

Credits subtract directly from the tax you owe, dollar for dollar, so getting the dependent question right is worth more today than the exemption ever was.

Qualifying Child

A qualifying child must pass five tests. Miss any one and the person doesn’t qualify under this category.⁴

Relationship. The child must be your son, daughter, stepchild, foster child, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, or a descendant of any of these — a grandchild, niece, or nephew, for example. Adopted children count the same as biological children.⁶
Age. Younger than you, and either under 19 at year-end or under 24 if a full-time student. No age limit applies if the child is permanently and totally disabled.⁸
Residency. The child must live with you for more than half the tax year. Temporary absences for school, medical care, or military service still count as time lived with you.⁷
Support. The child cannot have provided more than half of their own support during the year.
Joint return. The child cannot have filed a joint return with a spouse, unless the return was filed only to claim a refund.⁷

Read the support test carefully. It asks whether the child provided more than half of their own support, not whether you did. The qualifying relative test below is different.

Qualifying Relative

Someone who fails the qualifying child tests, often because they are too old, earn too much, or are a more distant relative, may still count as a qualifying relative. Four tests apply:⁷

Not a qualifying child. The person cannot already be your qualifying child or anyone else’s.
Relationship or household member. The person must either be related to you in a specific way — parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt, uncle, in-law, or certain other relatives — or live with you as a member of your household for the entire year. Close relatives such as parents don’t need to live with you; more distant relatives and unrelated people do.⁶
Gross income. The person’s gross income must be below $5,050 for the year.⁷
Support. You must provide more than half of the person’s total support during the year.

Support here means spending on food, housing (measured by fair rental value, not your mortgage payment), clothing, education, medical and dental care, transportation, and recreation. It does not include the person’s federal or state income taxes, Social Security taxes, life insurance premiums, funeral expenses, or scholarships.⁶

Baseline Requirements for Any Dependent

On top of the qualifying child or qualifying relative tests, every dependent must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, U.S. resident alien, or a resident of Canada or Mexico.⁹

Each dependent also needs a valid taxpayer identification number, typically a Social Security number. An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) works if the dependent isn’t eligible for an SSN, and an Adoption Taxpayer Identification Number (ATIN) works for a child placed through an authorized adoption agency.⁶ The Child Tax Credit adds a stricter requirement: each qualifying child must have an SSN valid for employment, issued before the due date of your return.⁵

When More Than One Person Could Claim the Same Child

If two people could claim the same qualifying child, the IRS applies tiebreaker rules automatically. You don’t file a form to invoke them, and if both people claim the child and neither backs down, the losing claim is disallowed, which can trigger penalties and an amended return.⁶

If only one of the people is a parent, the parent claims the child.
If both parents file jointly and can claim the child, the child is treated as the qualifying child of both parents on that return.
If two parents don’t file jointly, the child goes to the parent the child lived with longer during the year. Equal time is broken by higher adjusted gross income.
If no parent is claiming the child, the person with the highest AGI wins.
If a parent could claim the child but chooses not to, another person can claim the child only if that person’s AGI is higher than the AGI of every parent who could have claimed the child.⁴

Multiple Support Agreements

Sometimes no single person provides more than half of a qualifying relative’s support, but several people together do. A common case is adult siblings sharing the cost of caring for an aging parent. One contributor can still claim the dependent through a multiple support agreement filed on IRS Form 2120, provided every one of these is true:¹⁰

You and one or more other eligible people together paid more than half of the person’s support.
No single person paid more than half.
You personally paid more than 10% of the support.
The person meets all other qualifying relative tests.
Every other eligible person who paid more than 10% signs a written statement agreeing not to claim the dependent for that year.

Multiple support agreements apply only to qualifying relatives, not qualifying children. Families using this arrangement can rotate the claim year to year, as long as whoever claims the dependent contributed more than 10% and holds signed waivers from the other eligible contributors.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S.C. 151 – Allowance of Deductions for Personal Exemptions
2
eCFR. 26 CFR 1.151-1 – Deductions for Personal Exemptions
3
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026, Including Amendments From the One, Big, Beautiful Bill
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 152 – Dependent Defined
5
Internal Revenue Service. Child Tax Credit
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 501 – Dependents, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information
7
Internal Revenue Service. Dependents
8
Internal Revenue Service. Qualifying Child Rules
9
Internal Revenue Service. Nonresident Aliens – Dependents
10
IRS.gov. Form 2120 Multiple Support Declaration