Year 2015 we spent 1000$ on application fees for different colleges - how do I show that for 2015 amendment? We had a net refund for 2015. So not sure if this is useful

[Carl]

Application fees are not a qualified education expense and therefore are not deductible. The only deductible qualified education expenses are tuition, books and lab fees. That's it, with no exceptions.

[saurabhvirmani]

Thanks Carl. Could you please point me to the IRS article that may have been the source of your information. I have banged my head at turbo tax software and the IRS website after I was told by a tax expert that application fees is covered under Tuition and Fees credit.

[saurabhvirmani]

Thanks Carl

[Carl]

It's all covered in IRS Publication 970 at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf  That publication is 86 pages, and over the last few years I've read every word of it on more than one occasion. Nowhere does it say application fees are a qualified education expense that is deductible.
Now the publication referenced has been updated for 2018 of course, as it is updated every year. So anything's possible. However, I'm confident you will not find anything saying your application fee is a qualified and deductible education expense. In fact, the word "application" only appears once in the document, and the context it's used with has nothing to do with education at all.