Why did my refund go down when I entered my 1098-T tuition statement from my college?

[MaryK4]

TurboTax calculates the entries as you enter them so you may not see result immediately- in your case, for example, if your parents are claiming you as dependent, you cannot take the Education Credits, if your Box 5 amount is higher than your Box 1 amount, you would have taxable scholarship, if you have not entered all educational expenses the results may not be complete.

[hbl3973]

MaryK1101 is correct though I can't see how your refund would suddenly go down during the 1098-T interview if you were a dependent.  It just wouldn't change.  In my experience it is most likely that it is the second, scholarship income in Box 5 that is the culprit.  IRS Publication 970 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf) discusses this in sometimes excruciating detail in Chapter 1.  Scholarships will be tax free if they are used for qualified educational expenses, generally tuition and books, but not room and board. (See pages 12 or 24 for such details for the relevant credit.)  So be sure to include those qualified out-of-pocket expenses that won't appear on the 1098-T.  If including the additional qualified expense still doesn't equal or exceed the scholarship amount, then sometimes it can be worthwhile to increase the amount of scholarship being taxed in order to shift some of the qualified expenses to the status of being your own expenses.  Page 28 goes into this under the section "Coordination with Pell grants and other scholarships" in which the requirements for such income shifting are spelled out, the main one being that the scholarship was not specifically restricted to tuition but could be used for room and board and other expenses.