I graduated in 05/2020 and throughout college I was claimed as a dependent. Now I plan to file this year as an independent. I am unsure on what I should do. My 1098t has box 1 empty. It shows all of my scholarships and grants I used to pay tuition for the Spring 2020 semester in box 5. I have my school statements from 2019 that show when I registered and the date I began getting billed during 11/2019. My scholarships and grants didn't kick in until the end of 1/2020. Spring 2020 was paid that same semester and I even received a small $800 refund check after it was paid off. When I tried filing it shows as If the 16k in scholarships and grants were income.
My colleges financial aid page says this:
"Box 1 will be empty if you were billed for the spring 2020 term in 2019. In this case, these tuition charges would have appeared on your 2018 1098-T. This is the case even if you made all of your payments in 2020. There may still be amounts in other boxes, which is why a 1098-T form was generated for you."
This confused me more and scares me because I don't want to make a mistake. Is this normal or do I need to contact the school to have this corrected?
