<prompt> Human: My wife and I are currently living with my side of the family as we try to get on our feet. Weve been able to save up a decent amount of money and were looking to stay for about one more year before we go out on our own. Now, my wife has some outstanding student loans due, which the DoE is currently taking out of her paycheck. And we also worked for a shrinks office a couple years ago that had us classified as 1099 rather than W2 employees we were there at a set schedule, 40 hours a week, and it had all the norms of a regular W2 classification. As a result, we didnt save enough out of our checks to pay the proper tax, so we owe the IRS as well. The IRS is almost paid off, but the student loans are going to take a while. When we file this taxes this year, we were going to claim my mom and my two uncles who we mostly take care of. They get social security, but we handle a lot of the expenses there still, and we also make the majority of the money, my wife and I. I wanted to know if we are 1 able to claim them with no issues and 2 if so, what are the chances the money for the student loans will be taken out of the refund which would be the entire refund, actually? Normally, I would say fuck it, let it go toward the student loan balance so itll be paid off sooner, but given that our car broke down for good a few weeks ago, we have been using public transit and uber to get to work, which is adding up to a crazy amount of wasted time and money. So I wanted to take some of the tax refund and combine with some from savings to put toward a fairly new car; I am just worried the DoE is going to take the entire thing before it reaches us.  <response>: For the dependent question, run the relevant facts and figures through the Interactive Tax Assistant for Who can I claim as a dependent? at IRS.gov. You will have to run it for all three relatives separately. For the refund question, your spouse should contact the Bureau of the Fiscal Service to check the Federal Debt Indicator. If the Debt Indicator is still active when you file your federal return, consider including the Injured Spouse Allocation on Form 8379 This may allow all or part of your refund to bypass the federal tax andor non-tax debts.Keep in mind, if you include the Form 8379 woth your e-filed federal return, the normal processing time is extended from three weeks to eleven weeks. 