I know someone who claimed her U.S born child for 4 years straight on her taxes, but the child has been living with her grandmother in the Dominican Republic for the past 4 years. Now she is getting in trouble for doing that. My questions are... what kind of trouble? How serious is this? And this person has never been in trouble before in her whole life.. will she have to go to jail, pay money, do community service?? She is also pregnant ,so would they send a pregnant women to jail?

It would be very, very unusual for this to result in jail time - the amount of money that this woman defrauded the IRS of is really not that much, at least not compared to big tme swindlers. At the minimum she will have to pay back taxes owed plus interest, and if the IRS pressed the case and charged her with fraud there may be a fine to pay as well.

Agreed. The IRS has bigger fish to fry than a pregnant woman who decided to try to get a bit more money back on her tax return.

She WILL have to pay the back taxes, plus penalties and interest, but I doubt that a fine will be assessed, and I would be shocked if they pressed for prison time.

Thank you everyone for answering.. great tips!. a tip for a tip

If the child is a U.S. citizen living in a foreign country, the child does not qualify as Qualifying Child as the child did not live with "someone" for more than 6 months.

The child can qualify as Qualifying Relative. It is not required that the child lived with "someone" for any part of the year. "someone" must provide more than half of the child support.