Thanks for the detailed post. It almost sounds like it would pay for me to hire someone who does tax preparation for a living as it would save me more than the taxes I may have to pay. It's a shame as her taxes should be simple and TurboTax appears to still have some bugs in it. Right now Turbotax is showing she has a $12,500 standard deduction which is being deducted from the $24k in 529 payments to calculate her taxes. Yes we checked the appropriate boxes that she was a dependent.
She had a little summer job where she made about $1500 on a W2.
You are correct there are about $2,500 in books, computer, and other 'fees' from the school that we had to pay. Looking at her itemized school bill for fall / spring minus room and board totals about $19k while the school only reported $18k as tuition. I have no idea which 'fees' were not tuition.
