The dollar limits for both the exclusion of employer-paid adoption expenses and the tax credit apply "per adoption effort." Therefore, if your adoption spans two or more years, you can only claim total credits of up to $11,390 over all the years that you paid expenses. If your AGI, as modified above, is $170,820 or less, you qualify for the entire dollar amount of the credit and/or exclusion.

Form 8839, Qualified Adoption Expenses

The file is in Adobe portable document format (PDF), which requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

To get a free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader software, go to the Adobe web site.

For more information, see our discussion of dollar limits on adoption expenses.

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