Just to give one example of the misinformation I am finding, one law firm has a page on savings bonds. They stated "When a bond has a co-owner, the Treasury and the IRS assume that the first named owner is the principal owner, who is the person who will pay the income tax on the interest." OK, maybe I'll run with that. But two paragraphs later they say "When a bond is cashed, it is generally accepted that the individual cashing the savings bond is the individual responsible for the interest reporting on that year’s income tax return." This is contradictory info if the second named owner is the one cashing the bond.
It shocks me that this question isn't clearly answered already as EE bonds are quite popular as gifts for children. Why is something so simple as cashing a EE bond so darn complicated?
Edit - BTW the amounts of interest aren't huge, and I'm not that concerned about maxing out the education exclusion for savings bond interest. But I do want to avoid doing this "wrong" and throwing up red flags to the IRS.
