A few characteristics and the five tests stipulated by the IRS that a taxpayer must satisfy to claim a dependent as a qualifying child are: the relationship, gross income, support, joint return, and citizenship$/$residency$.$ In more depth, this is listed as the dependent must be a U$.$S$.$ citizen, U$.$S$.$ resident alien, U$.$S$.$ national, or a resident of Canada or Mexico, the dependent must be the taxpayers qualifying child or qualifying relative, the taxpayer must provide more than half of the person$$s total support for the year, and the person$$s gross income for the year must be less than $$4,300,($IRS $2022).$

One characteristic required to be considered a dependent that I chose off of the IRS website to look into further is the age of the dependent. It was listed as $$Age$$must be under the age of $19$ at the end of the tax year, or under the age of $24$ if a full$-$time student for at least five months of the year, or be permanently and totally disabled at any time during the year,$($IRS $2022).$ I believe this to be a reasonable requirement as it helps keep taxpayers from falsely claiming a dependent who is old enough to be filing on their own and has no disabilities keeping them from doing so$.$ This also allows those with disabled children to be able to claim them as a dependent for as long as needed.

One of the five tests for a qualifying child to be claimed as a dependent I chose off the IRS website to look into further is that the dependent doesn$$t make more than $$4,300$ gross income a year. I believe the IRS made this a requirement so that this would apply not only to a child but to someone who is not able to financially take care of themselves. In $2023,$on average, single workers in the US require an annual income of $$57,200$ to make a living wage in America, according to the analysis by GOBankingRates,$($Diaz $2023).$ If this analysis is correct, that would make the amount of gross income listed for a dependent around $7\%$ of the average required amount of income to live. I think this was for the sake of the dependent who isn't financially stable as well as for the system to not be taken advantage of in case the taxpayer that was trying to claim the dependent was actually making enough money they didn$$t need to be claimed.