Income Tax Redux: Providing more than half of the child's support

While it is clear that the code says a dependent child could not have provided more than half of their own support, I recall the discussion going that as subsidy was not claimed as taxable income and was not from the child providing his own support that foster parents did not need to worry in most cases about this particular qualifier for a dependent child, the exception being those children who worked and paid directly for their own support. I just read Publication 17 Chapter 3 on the IRS site which says that subsidy or reimbursement for providing foster care is considered support by the county or agency for the child. It appears that a foster parent needs to provide more support than the reimbursement. The publication lists out ways to calculate the child's support costs including fair rental rate of the furnished room with utilities, division of food, etc. When a foster parent adds up all eligible expenses, then deducts all support from state aid like food stamps or WIC and all county aid like foster care stipend then the amount left that the family is providing has to be more than half the total support number. While those who receive small stipends can easily show more than half the support, those who have therapeutic or medical needs children who receive much of the child's support through the state might not be able to claim the children if my reading of this is correct.Let's say you get $1200 for a high needs child in foster care reimbursement, $500 in WIC benefits for a child, $275 in transportation reimbursement, Medicaid paid for $3,125 in medications and medical equipment, and you got $150 in clothing reimbursement. If you add up everything it costs to support that child including fair rental rate of the room and utilities, food, transportation, medication, etc and you come up with $10,000 a month to support that child then you can't claim the child. $10,000 to support him minus the $5,250 you are getting in support means the $4,750 out of your pocket every month doesn't qualify. Right? But you could then argue that you are in the trade or business of supporting the foster care agency and you could deduct that $4,750 as charitable contributions, right?Does anyone have any clarifying or overriding information about this? Unless we identify otherwise, none of us are tax professionals or are giving financial advice, myself included. We're just discussing our personal and unprofessional experiences and understandings of things that are worthy of discussing with our individual tax professionals. [url=http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch03.html#en_US_publink1000170967]Publication 17 (2009), Your Federal Income Tax[/url]