@dan1949 - I am going to assume you are in the 4th year of college (since you took the AOTC the past three years). is your strategy to take AOTC in Year 5 of college????
that won't work. AOTC can only be taken for 4 years (as you infer), but it can't be used for a 5th year of college.
are you a dependent of your parents? how old are you? what was your income this year?
LLC is a non-refundable credit, so it is the LOWER of a) 20% * the eligible educational expenses (net of scholarship) OR the tax liability on Line 18 of Form 1040.
AOTC has both a non-refundable and refundable component.
The non-refundavble credit is the LOWER of $1500 (I won't go into the math on how it comes to $1500 in this post unless it's important to you) OR the Tax liability on Line 18 of Form 1040.
The refundable credit is $1,000 (again I won't go into the math unless that is important to you). However, under the following condition, a student is NOT eligible for the redundable credit
a) the student is under 24 years old and provides less than 50% of his own support AND
b) at least one parent is alive AND
c) the filing status is NOT MFJ.
does that help? please provide more background if my assumption about a 5th year is not valid.
