This is the huge document. 🙂 It assumes that you do interactive tax return, or agent is doing it for you, and fill 1040 form with your help. In our case Turbotax plays the agent's role, it does not give you the way to work directly to 1040 form, on contrary it is asking certain questions and generates 1040 on a fly, based on your answers. So Turbox is the one who is learning this publication. 🙂
Could you tell me, just in simple steps"
1. Higher education goes to only daughter's return, ot on our both returns? Still not clear.
2. If I have to put "yes" on the question about Higher Education, should I put 1098-T in my return, or not?
3. If I report 1098-T in my return should I report spending on the books, printer, laptop and so on? And if I am the one who reports those numbers does it mean that daughter answer "no" on the question about how much we spent in the student store, and outside of the dorm?
4. Who is putting part of the scholarship which was not spent on the tuition, basically the difference between box 5 and box 1? If I put, turbotax pops up reminder that daughter has to file own return.
I believe all my questions are more about the turbotax usage, than about the law. Because in my case we deal with the rare situation when box 5 is more than box 1, i.e. all costs are covered by scholarships with even excess in cash. This case is not much discussed, in the case of partial coverage I have learned perfectly what to do, and how to distribute charges between the returns. But in my case, if I report spending, she does not report anything, but the excess amount of box 5 over box 1. If she reports all spending on materials and books, I might duplicate it, depending how turbotax is working, I do not know algorithm. Am I correct that in this case it is better for mine and IRS good, not to even mention higher education and 1098-T in my return?
Or what goes to mine and hers in terms of the turbotax questions?
Please clarify this for me. 🙂
