Head of Household (HOH)

Head of household is the federal filing status that sits between single and married filing jointly. Section 2(b) of the Internal Revenue Code is captioned "Definition of head of household" and grants the status "if, and only if" the individual is not married at the close of the taxable year, is not a surviving spouse, and either maintains a home that was for more than half the year the principal place of abode of a qualifying person, or maintains a home that was for the whole year the main home of a dependent parent. In both cases the statute adds that a taxpayer is treated as maintaining a household "only if over half of the cost of maintaining the household during the taxable year is furnished by such individual." The status is not a choice among options. It is a test that either is or is not met, and where it is met it displaces single, which is the residual status for anyone unmarried who qualifies for nothing better.

The dependency requirement is asymmetric, and the asymmetry is the part most consumer guidance gets wrong. Section 2(b)(1)(A) has two clauses. Clause (i) covers a qualifying child as defined in section 152(c), and it does not require that the child be your dependent; it excludes the child only where the child is both married at the close of your tax year and not your dependent by reason of two narrow provisions. Clause (ii) covers "any other person who is a dependent of the taxpayer," and there the dependency is required — which for a relative who is not a qualifying child means their own gross income has to stay under the section 152(d)(1)(B) limit, $5,300 for 2026. So a child whose dependency claim you released to the other parent, or a child whose own income is too high to be claimed, can still be the person who makes you a head of household. Form 1040 anticipates exactly this: the Filing Status block asks for the child's name where the qualifying person is a child but not your dependent.

The parent limb is a separate rule with two different tests. Section 2(b)(1)(B) has no "as a member of such household" language and no more-than-half-the-year language, and Publication 501 spells out what that means. If the qualifying person is your parent, you may be eligible even though your parent does not live with you, but you must be able to claim your parent as a dependent and you must pay more than half the cost of keeping up a home that was your parent's main home for the entire year. Paying more than half the cost of keeping a parent in a rest home or a home for the elderly counts as paying more than half the cost of keeping up their main home.

Two people the statute shuts out even though they are your dependents. Section 2(b)(3)(B) bars the status where it is claimed by reason of an individual who would not be a dependent but for either of two provisions. The first is section 152(d)(2)(H), the catch-all that makes an unrelated person who shares your home for the year a qualifying relative. That is the route a live-in partner takes, so a partner can be your dependent for other purposes and can never make you a head of household. The second is section 152(d)(3), the multiple-support-agreement rule, under which several contributors agree which of them claims a person none of them individually supports by more than half. A dependent reached that way also cannot support the status. Publication 501 reaches the same result from the other direction with a worked case where a friend's child lives with the taxpayer all year and is not a qualifying person, because the child is the friend's qualifying child.

Marital status has three special rules and they cut in different directions. Someone legally separated under a decree of divorce or of separate maintenance is not considered married, which opens the status. A taxpayer whose spouse was a nonresident alien at any time during the year is treated as not married, which can also open it, though Publication 501 adds the limit that makes that rule less useful than it first sounds: the nonresident spouse is not a qualifying person, so somebody else in the household has to be. But a taxpayer whose spouse died during the year is treated as married for that year, so the year of a spouse's death is not a head of household year at all; it is generally a joint return year, with the surviving-spouse status available for the two years after. Separately, section 2(b)(3)(A) removes the status entirely from anyone who was a nonresident alien at any time during the year.

The married-living-apart route is narrower than the ordinary one. Section 2(c) routes a still-married taxpayer through section 7703(b), which treats them as not married if they file a separate return, furnish more than half the cost of the household, and maintain as their home a household that was for more than half the year the principal place of abode of a child within the meaning of section 152(f)(1) whom they are entitled to claim, or would be entitled to claim but for having released the claim to the other parent. Section 7703(b)(3) adds that the spouse must not have been a member of that household during the last six months of the year. The consequence is easy to state backwards. A grandchild or a dependent parent opens the ordinary section 2(b) route and does not open this one, because section 152(f)(1) defines a child as a son, daughter, stepson, stepdaughter or eligible foster child and nothing wider.

Sorting the requirements between the two routes, because conflating them is the usual error. Paying over half the cost of the household is required either way, once by the closing sentence of section 2(b)(1) and again by section 7703(b)(2), and a qualifying person in the home for more than half the year is likewise common to both. What belongs only to the married-living-apart route is the six-month separation in section 7703(b)(3), the narrow definition of child, and one requirement that runs against the asymmetry described above: section 7703(b)(1) asks for a child the taxpayer is entitled to claim as a dependent. It carries its own parallel carve-out in the same "or would be so entitled but for section 152(e)" form, so releasing the claim does not close this route either. But a child who is simply not claimable makes a still-married separated parent fail here where an unmarried parent would succeed. Publication 501 attaches a caution to the same test that is easy to read past: a taxpayer may be considered unmarried for head of household purposes and still not be treated as unmarried for other purposes, and it names the earned income credit as one that applies its own test.

Temporary absences, and the year a qualifying person is born or dies. Publication 501 treats the taxpayer and the qualifying person as living together through an absence for illness, education, business, vacation, military service or detention in a juvenile facility, on two conditions that are usually left out of summaries: it has to be reasonable to assume the absent person will return, and the taxpayer has to keep up the home throughout. The same doctrine cuts against a taxpayer on the married-living-apart route, where a spouse who is temporarily absent for one of those reasons still counts as living in the home and so defeats the six-month test. Where the qualifying person is born or dies during the year, the residence test is measured against the part of the year they were alive rather than the whole of it: more than half of that part for a qualifying child or other qualifying relative, and all of it for a parent, which mirrors the whole-year requirement in the parent limb. A child adopted during the year, lawfully placed for adoption during it, or placed with the taxpayer as an eligible foster child during it, is treated as having lived in the home for more than half the year if the home was the child's main home for more than half the time since the placement. Note this residence exception reaches a foster child even though the married-living-apart route's definition of child does not.

What a released dependency claim moves, and what it leaves behind. This is the point on which a divorced or separated parent is most often given wrong information, and the statute settles it in four words. Section 2(b)(1)(A)(i) reads the qualifying-child definition "determined without regard to section 152(e)", and section 152(e) is the provision that lets a custodial parent hand the dependency claim to the other parent. Switching it off makes the release invisible to this filing status, so the child stays the custodial parent's qualifying child for head of household even in a year the custodial parent claims nothing for them; the notes to Publication 501's qualifying-person table say exactly that. Four things move with a signed Form 8332, and the publication and the form's own instructions list the same four: the dependency claim, the child tax credit, the additional child tax credit, and the credit for other dependents. Four things do not. Head of household status and the earned income credit remain with the custodial parent if otherwise eligible, or with another eligible person under the tie-breaker rules, and the credit for child and dependent care expenses and the exclusion from income for dependent care benefits are the custodial parent's alone. A noncustodial parent may still reach the earned income credit on a self-only basis, which is a different computation rather than a share of the child's. Two mechanics sit underneath all of it. The custodial parent is the one with whom the child spent the greater number of nights, with the higher adjusted gross income breaking a tie. And a release cannot be undone for the year in progress: the revocation takes effect no earlier than the year after the one in which the revoking parent provides written notice, or makes a reasonable effort to provide it, so an effort that fails to reach the other parent still starts the clock.

When two adults keep one home. Most of these cases settle by arithmetic, because over half the cost of a single household can only be furnished by one person. Where a real contest survives that, two rules decide it. Publication 501's qualifying-person table states that one person cannot qualify two taxpayers for head of household in the same year. And where a child is the qualifying child of more than one taxpayer, section 152(c)(4) ranks the claims: a parent outranks a taxpayer who is not a parent; between parents who do not file jointly, the child goes to the parent they lived with longer during the year, and then to the higher adjusted gross income; and someone who is not a parent can take the child only if their own adjusted gross income exceeds that of every parent. So a parent sharing a grandparent's home keeps the child as their qualifying person if they claim the child at all, and the grandparent reaches it only where the parent does not claim and the grandparent's income is the higher of the two.

What the status is worth, and where the advantage stops. The standard deduction is $24,150 against $16,100 for a single filer, and income-tested limits written for a head of household generally sit above the figures written for a single filer. The rate schedule is the part usually described too generously. Reading the two tables in the statute's own base dollars, a head of household's 10% band runs to $13,600 against $9,525 for a single filer and the 12% band to $51,800 against $38,700, but from the top of the 22% band upward the two tables are identical, at $82,500, $157,500, $200,000 and $500,000. The published tables track that pattern closely without reproducing it exactly, because the two statuses round differently: inflation adjustments are rounded in $50 steps for a head of household but in $25 steps for an unmarried individual who is neither a surviving spouse nor a head of household. So in a given year the upper boundaries land within a rounding step of each other rather than on the same figure. The benefit is therefore real, capped, and concentrated in the lower brackets and the standard deduction rather than spread across the whole schedule. A high-earning head of household and a high-earning single filer pay the same marginal rate on their top dollars. None of it is discretionary either. The status is claimed by meeting the test, and because the test turns on facts inside a household it is one the IRS does examine.

The current year's figures, and five years of history. The row for 2026 is drawn from this site's single source of truth for year-indexed figures, so it moves when the IRS publishes the next set. Every dollar amount is the top of that rate's band, which is the "not over" figure the IRS prints rather than the point at which the next rate starts: taxable income sitting exactly on a boundary is taxed entirely at the lower rate, and the next rate reaches only the excess above it. Anything above the last column is taxed at 37%. The five earlier rows are history and will not change.

The step between 2025 and 2026 in the two lowest boundaries is real, not a transcription error. The top of the 10% band and the top of the 12% band rose about 4% while the four boundaries above them rose about 2.3%, because section 70101(b) of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act narrowed the calendar-year-2017 base-year substitution in section 1(j)(3)(B)(i) so that it reaches only the upper boundaries. The two lower ones fall back to the default 2016 base, which is one additional year of indexing. In proportional terms it is a single change in level rather than the start of a widening trend, though the dollar gap between a head of household and a single filer at the bottom of the schedule does keep growing with each year's adjustment. The 2025 standard deduction is a statutory figure rather than an indexed one for a related reason: section 70102 of the same Act raised the head-of-household amount written into section 63(c)(7)(A)(i), superseding the lower amount originally published for that year.

Head of household is not a fixed fraction of anything, which is the most useful thing the table shows. Its boundaries are indexed in their own right, so its relationship to the other statuses shifts as income rises instead of holding steady. Taking 2025, where the figures on both sides are now settled, the top of the head of household 10% band was 142.6% of the single figure while the tops of its 22%, 24% and 35% bands were identical to single's and the top of its 32% band sat $25 below, so the whole of the advantage over a single filer is concentrated in the two lowest bands and has gone by the middle of the schedule. Measured against a joint return the ratio runs the other way, from 71.3% at the top of the 10% band to 83.3% at the top of the 35%, which is the same fact from the other side: the joint bands are widest relative to head of household exactly where head of household is doing the most work. The standard deduction behaves differently again, and the difference is structural. Section 63(c)(2)(A) sets the joint and surviving-spouse amount at 200% of the single amount by formula, so those two cannot drift apart. Head of household is a separately stated dollar amount that Congress has set at exactly 1.5 times the single figure, but each of the two is indexed on its own and each increase is rounded down to a multiple of $50, so the published ratio holds only as closely as the rounding allows. In the table it lands exactly on 1.5 for 2024 and 2025 and a rounding step away from it in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The instruction that follows is the same either way: read each status's own published figure, and never derive one from another.

The cost test is the one part of the status that comes down to arithmetic, and Publication 501 is specific about what belongs in it. Include rent, mortgage interest, real estate taxes, insurance on the home, repairs, utilities, and food eaten in the home. Leave out clothing, education, medical treatment, vacations, life insurance and transportation, and leave out the value of your own services or those of anyone in the household. One rule catches people out: money spent out of funds received in the qualifying person's own name, Social Security benefits being the usual example, counts as paid by that person rather than by you.

Worksheet 1 in the publication sets this out in two money columns, the amount you paid and the total cost, across eight lines: property taxes, mortgage interest, rent, utilities, repairs and maintenance, property insurance, food eaten in the home, and other household expenses. You total both columns, subtract what you paid from the total, and compare. The comparison is what the statute asks for, so a household nobody pays over half of leaves nobody eligible.

The treatment of money that reaches the household from outside is not uniform, and the two rules in the worksheet point opposite ways. Funds received in the qualifying person's own name and spent on the home count as that person's contribution rather than yours. Payments under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or a similar public assistance program run the other way: where you received them and used them to support another person, the worksheet's note treats them as support you provided rather than as support provided by the government. Two things are worth noting about that second rule. Publication 501 attributes it to proposed Treasury regulations rather than to a final one, and it is written in the language of the support test rather than in the language of household cost, so it is stated here as the publication states it.

A hypothetical example. Devon's father lives alone in an apartment, and Devon claims his father as a dependent. Over the year the apartment costs $18,000 in rent, $2,700 in utilities, $300 in renters insurance, $400 in repairs and $4,600 in food eaten there, a total of $26,000. Half of that is $13,000. Devon pays $15,200 of it directly and his father's Social Security covers the remaining $10,800, which counts as his father's own contribution rather than Devon's. Because $15,200 is more than $13,000, Devon furnished over half the cost and meets the maintenance test.

Two things that example deliberately leaves out. Devon also paid several thousand dollars of his father's medical bills during the year, and those do not enter the calculation at all, because medical treatment is not a cost of keeping up a home. And the apartment has to have been his father's main home for the entire year, not merely for more than half of it, because the parent limb of the statute is written differently from the general one.

A second hypothetical, where the intuitive answer is the wrong one for both people in it. Priya and Marcus are divorced, and their daughter spent 280 nights of the year with Priya and the rest with Marcus. Priya signs Form 8332, so Marcus claims their daughter as a dependent and takes the child tax credit. Marcus then assumes the filing status follows the dependent and files as head of household; Priya assumes she signed the status away and files single. Both have it wrong. Because section 2(b)(1)(A)(i) reads the qualifying-child rules without regard to section 152(e), the daughter is still Priya's qualifying child for this status, so Priya is the one who can file as head of household, provided she also furnished over half the cost of the home. Marcus cannot use a child who is his qualifying child only by reason of the release, and with no other qualifying person in his household he files single. The dependency claim and the filing status moved in different directions from one signature.

A third hypothetical, on the year a qualifying person dies. Ines claims her mother as a dependent, and her mother lives alone in a flat until she dies in September. Keeping up the flat from January until the death costs $9,000, of which Ines pays $5,600 and her brother pays $3,400. Half of $9,000 is $4,500, so Ines furnished more than half. Because the test is measured against the part of the year her mother was alive rather than against the whole year, and the flat was her mother's main home for all of that part, Ines can still file as head of household for the year of the death.

One note on reading the rate table above, since the boundaries are easy to misuse. A head of household with taxable income of exactly $17,700 is taxed at 10% on all of it, because the boundary dollar falls inside the lower band. A head of household with taxable income of $67,450 pays 10% on the first $17,700 and 12% on the rest, not 12% on the whole amount.

Advantages of the status

• A larger standard deduction than a single filer's, and wider 10% and 12% rate bands, applied to the same income.
• Income-tested thresholds written for a head of household generally sit above the single figures, so a benefit that phases out can remain available longer.
• A parent who lives elsewhere can support it, which is the only place in the filing statuses where the qualifying person need not share the home.
• A married person living apart with a child in the home may reach it instead of filing separately, which avoids most of what a separate return gives up.

Limits and cautions

• It is a test, not an election. Meeting most of it is worth nothing.
• An unrelated dependent, including a partner who lives with you and whom you genuinely support, can never qualify you.
• The year a spouse dies is not a head of household year, because the statute treats the survivor as married for that year.
• The married-living-apart route needs a child specifically, so a grandchild or a parent that would work for an unmarried taxpayer does not work here.
• Because eligibility rests on facts inside a household rather than on reported figures, it is a status worth being able to document.