If a student took out a student loan to cover a semester and was able to repay the amount within 120 days (counted as refund) does that count as education tax deduction?

[Carl]

Only the interest on the loan, and only if it was a qualified student loan, would be deductible. Now if *YOU* have enough earned income in that same time frame, then I would leave the loan out of it completely and report it "as if" you paid the education expenses directly. This will not work if you took out the loan in 2019 and paid it back in 2020 if you did not have sufficient earned income in 2019 to just ignore the loan completely.

[Hal_Al]

No. The loan is irrelevant, for tax purposes (except for the deductible interest you paid). What is relevant is the amount of tuition, and other qualified expenses, actually paid. Whether you paid the tuition with loans or out of pocket, you still count the payment for the tuition credit (there is no deduction, per se).