High-school and college students sometimes need to file their own tax returns based on money they've earned from part-time or summer jobs. However such students are usually dependents, and their parents claim the personal exemptions for their kids on the parents' tax returns. So how does a dependent go about filing out her own tax return? That's the question posed by Linda, who asked, "My granddaughter lives with us and we claimed her on our taxes. She works also, on the 1040ez form, can she still deduct some from her moneys. It says on there how much is being claimed on her. What do we put there?"
Dependents are not allowed to claim their own personal exemption, and sometimes they have a lower standard deduction. But otherwise the math on their tax return works the same. Preparing your granddaughter's taxes using Form 1040-EZ is pretty straightforward. Since she's a dependent, the box on Line 5 for "you" will be checked. This indicates that your granddaughter can be claimed as a dependent. You will then using the worksheet on page 2 of the Form 1040EZ tax form (pdf download, 2 pages) to calculate her exact standard deduction.
The rest of the 1040EZ form is just math to calculate any tax refund she might have.
Please read the comparison of online tax filing software here http://pistakulfi.blogspot.com/2010/02/online-tax-filing-software-comparison.html
Hope that helps.
Don’t forget the person who is entitled to claim the exemption is the person entitled to deduct the qualified education expenses, even if the student paid them.