I'm a graduate student on a 1/4-time appointment as a Graduate Research Assistant (I'm paid bi-weekly and have received a W2 with this money as earned income). In addition, I also receive a Fellowship that does not require me to teach, do research, or any service. It is a no-strings attached fellowship, and is represented in my 1098T in Section 5. I do not pay tuition or any fees. My question is: is it taxable? Based on Publication 970 of the IRS, it seems that this should not be considered taxable bc it does not require any service.
TIA!
Yep, it's taxable - at least initially. All scholarships, grants and anything else reported in box 5 are treated the same. It's all taxable income "initially". The taxability of that income is offset by the qualified education expenses it is used to pay for. Generally, those qualified expenses are in box 1 or 2. But after entering the 1098-T information, later screens asks you for qualified expenses not reported on the 1098-T. If box 5 is the greater amount, then the difference is taxable income to you and reported on line 21 of the 1040 with an annotation of SCH next to it.
See https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc421.html for what's taxable, and what's tax free.