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Education

This is fairly common since academic years don't line up with tax years very well. Since your parents claimed the tuition expenses for your spring 2021 classes but did not claim the scholarship amount received for that semester due to how the payments fell, the onus would be on you to report the scholarship amount as income this year with no offsetting expense. 

 

There are two possible workarounds. One is for your parents to refigure their education credit on their 2020 return to include your 2021 scholarship income. The 1098-T from 2020 should have the box checked that indicates the tuition includes amounts for the spring semester in 2021.  Therefore, you can move the scholarship to their prior-year return to line up the expense with the reimbursement. They will have to refigure their education credit based on including your scholarship income. This may cause them to owe significant taxes, or it may cause no difference whatsoever. That depends on several factors, such as which education credit you received, how much scholarship income was reported to you in 2021, and whether any payments were made for your tuition with an education savings account. 

 

If your tuition in 2020 was far greater than your scholarships received, even when you include the amount reported in 2021, they may not have to repay any credit at all. The same is true if they did not take an education credit due to their income level. 

 

Another workaround is if you had expenses for school fees, supplies, and books that you paid in 2021. You could use these to offset your scholarship income. You can include those expenses in the 1098-T information. 

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