Head of Household

How It Works

Head of Household is a valuable filing status that provides wider tax brackets and a larger standard deduction than Single status, but it has specific eligibility requirements. You must be unmarried (or "considered unmarried") on the last day of the tax year, pay more than half the cost of keeping up a home, and have a qualifying person live with you for more than half the year. Qualifying persons include children, stepchildren, foster children, and certain relatives. The 2025 standard deduction for Head of Household is $22,500, compared to $15,000 for Single filers, a $7,500 difference that saves between $900 and $2,775 in tax depending on your bracket. The bracket thresholds are also more favorable: the 12% bracket extends to $64,850 for HOH versus $48,475 for Single. A common mistake is claiming HOH when you don't actually qualify. The IRS audits this status more frequently than others. You must genuinely pay more than half the home's costs, including rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, repairs, and food consumed at home. Simply having a child isn't enough if you don't provide the majority of housing costs. Divorced parents should pay attention to custody arrangements and the "custodial parent" rules, as only one parent can claim HOH for each child.

Head of Household is one of the tax-code concepts that recurs across TaxCompare. The definition above is the technical answer; below is the practical context for how it shows up in the state-vs-state comparisons that drive the site.

In the tax-comparison engine, this concept feeds either the federal calculation (IRS Revenue Procedures) or the state calculation (Tax Foundation state-tax database). The methodology page describes which inputs flow into each piece of the model.