To qualify for your own stimulus check, you needed to have filed your 2019
taxes independently, which means no one else claimed you on their taxes as a dependent. You also had to have an
adjusted gross income of under $75,000 to receive the full amount of $1,200. (The sum decreases as your AGI goes up, and if you made over $99,000, you weren't eligible for a check.)
There are two different sets of rules for who counts as an adult or a dependent under current tax law, according to Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow at the
Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
One is the support test. If you're unmarried, you don't claim children as your own dependents, your parents provide you with financial support equal to or greater than half of your annual income and you made less than $4,200 in 2019, then your parents can still claim you as their dependent. Another is the residency test: If you're a full-time student under the age of 24 who resides with an adult taxpayer more than half of the year (unless you're living on a college campus), you can be claimed as a dependent, no matter how much money you make.