I wonder if it's a glitch in TT. If I say "no" to the R&B question, the $13,704 isn't captured as income anywhere. That's how I started That's consistent with other posts that say you have to answer "yes" to the R&B quetstion to get the income to show up on line 8.
If I do as you suggest and report $23,704 as income, then my tax goes up by $1200 compared to getting the $2000 credit (I have some W2 income so tax bill is enough to get full credit). That's $800 better than nothing, but my state tax also goes up by $425 since Michigan doesn't also apply a credit. Not sure it's worth dinking around for the difference between a $2000 credit and $1645 in additional tax due to the higher income report.
Maybe the real question is what happens if I assume TT is correct, take the $2000 credit and shouldn't have?
If I have to assume TT doesn't know what it's doing and go in and delete the Education Credit form from my return, that might remove the credit. TT says it guarantees the results, but not sure if that's comforting enough!
