Thanks for you help. Someone was asking me this:
You mention purchasing the computer at the start of 2021. When did you enroll in the online degree program? Does the school have a campus location you could access as an enrolled student? What kind of degree program are you in, specifically is it one like architecture that would require significant processing power or did you buy a Mac where a cheap Chromebook would have sufficed?"
This was my response:
I purchased the computer at the start of 2021. I am currently a Junior. For 2021, I was a sophomore. As COVID happened, more and more courses transitioned online. The school closed on March 2020, moved all in-person classes to online and had employees work remotely. By Fall 2020, 85% of the classes remained online (the ones that were face to face were mostly in areas such as Health Sciences, Public Safety, ...). At the end of 2020, commencement was moved online. All school services were available starting Jan 4, 2021. By the end of the Spring 2021 semester, in-person commencement had resumed since the pandemic began.
My degree is on Information Technology / Cybersecurity. While I have taken classes where a Chromebook would have sufficed (e.g., sociology), most of my classes are lab based (requiring Virtual Machines, Databases, Penetration Testing, etc...) and can't be done over a Chromebook. The school library, which also opened Jan 4th 2021, loans equipment to students for up to a 3 hour period, for in-library use only. But they only come with MS Office and you cannot install any custom software on them. Because I was enrolled online, we are charged a "Lab Fee for Distance Learning" rather than the typical "Lab Fee" which gives you access to school computers (with the appropriate software and setup) during the class periods.
Would that change in any form or fashion the eligibility of the expense?
