Hello, I graduated college last year in Spring 2022. For all four years of college I got a full-ride scholarship that covered tuition/fees as well as room/board, etc. So this latter part of my scholarship was taxable income.
For simple math, let's say educational expenses were always around 5000 a semester and the taxable portion was around 5000 a semester. So, my for a full year I would have 10,000 paid to the university in payments for tuition and fees, and 20,000 in scholarships (10k of which went directly to me as taxable income).
In 2018, freshman year, I did not file taxes as I had no other income and my scholarship income for one semester fell under the standard deduction -- I didn't bother checking the 1098-T back then. I started filing taxes from tax year 2019 when I started earning other W2 income and my scholarship income grew above the standard deduction. The 1098-T amounts for 2019, 2020, and 2021 all lined up with the expected 10k in box 1 and 20k in box 5.
Come now when I am filing for 2022, expecting the halved amounts to account for just one semester (so 5k in box 1 and 10k in box 5). Instead I see there is zero in box 1 and 10k in box 5. The payments from my scholarship are always made in the same calendar year as the semester. They are billed on the student portal in December of the earlier year, but actually *paid* by my scholarship and credited to my account in January. So I feel like for "qualified educational expenses paid in 2022..." I should be using the date when it is paid from my account, not billed. Is this correct?
Anyway, this sparked some deeper digging and I see that back in 2018, the return does seem to include tuition payments for 2 semesters in box 1. So 2018's box 1 states that 10k was received when I would've expected only 5k. However, box 7 ("Checked if the amount in box 1 includes amounts for an academic period beginning January– March [following year]") is not checked on these 1098-Ts, which is why I didn't realize this earlier.
I would like to just be accurate and claim that I *did* pay 5000 this year in tuition -- the 1098-T contradicts that, but according to my records it doesn't change the tax liability for 2018-2021. The other years I filed taxes are all the correct amount, regardless of which semesters were *technically* being counted under the tuition and scholarship numbers on the 1098-T -- no double counting.
For 2022, it seems unfair that my university is reporting that I got 10,000 in "free money" when in fact half of that went towards paying tuition. The tuition was paid in 2022 and it is reflected as such on my student account portal (it's just billed in December). Is it possible for me to use the 5000 figure as tuition paid? I don't want to trigger an audit or something by doing something wrong, but I feel like if I go along by using the paid date instead of billing date it should all add up, including prior years.
