Hello, my sister is married and has 3 kids, 2 of the oldest were born normal but the 3rd was born with profound mental retardation and is now 13 years old and lives at home with his parents, she use to claim the oldest kids on here taxs for the EIC but has never claimed the 13 year old before until 2007 where she had no problems and received a tax refund for the EIC and a additional child tax credit also. My question is if she files for a amened tax return for 2004, 2005, 2006 that I figured would come out to around $8,875 for all 3 years would the IRS audit her are should she just forget about it. She is scared to file amened returns because she thinks the state might try to take her son away from her because of him being non-educable and restricted to bed because of his handicapp. I know she could really use the money since she only makes 21,000 a year.

Have her amend the returns for 2005 and 2006. It is too late for 2004.

Amendments of this nature are rather common and will NOT affect her audit chances.

As to whether the state will intervene and try to take the child, I cannot say, but the state will NOT find out about this from the IRS, who does NOT share tax information with any government agency other than the state tax departments.