Q. Is it best to just pay the bill in January?
A. I'm not sure what you mean by "pay the bill". Yes, it's probably best if the school applies the scholarship check to the spring tuition, since that's what (apprarently) it's for. In genearl, you want the schoalship matched to the tuition it was intended for.
Don't get concerened about mismatches on the 1098-T. The IRS doesn't try to match numbers exactly. As previously said, you can make whatever adjustments you need in TurboTax. Based on many posts, in this forum, corrected 1098-Ts is something schools just don't do.
Q. Since it looks like no one's going to send a 1099-MISC for these two outside scholarships, and it's not going to mess up your AOTC by adding them to the scholarships that were actually applied to the fall bill that I plan on declaring?
A. Yes, if you enter it correctly in TurboTax.
