Confirming what others have said:
1. You cannot claim the education credit if the student is not claimed as your dependent. If he is your dependent, you can claim the tuition credit, even though the 1098-T is in his name.
2. You claiming your qualified dependent is optional.
3. But the dependent claiming himself is not optional.
There is a rule that says IF somebody else CAN claim him as a dependent, he is not allowed to claim himself. If he has sufficient income (usually more than $14,600, $15,750 for 2025), he can & should still file taxes. In TurboTax (TT), he indicates that somebody else can claim him as a dependent, at the personal information section. TT will check that box on form 1040.
With the tax law change, effective 2018 and recently renewed, most students will get the same refund (or pay the same amount of tax) whether they claim themselves or not. The personal exemption has been eliminated and the standard deduction increased. However, he can only qualify for an education credit, if he is not claimed as a dependent. Even then, there are restrictions on how much ed credit he can claim*.
There are two types of dependents, "Qualifying Children"(QC) and Other ("Qualifying Relative" in IRS parlance even though they don't have to actually be related). There is no income limit for a QC but there is an age limit, student status, a relationship test and residence test.
A child of a taxpayer can still be a “Qualifying Child” (QC) dependent, regardless of his/her income, if:
- He is under age 19, or under 24 if a full time student for at least 5 months of the year, or is totally & permanently disabled
- He did not provide more than 1/2 his own support. Scholarships are excluded from the support calculation. It doesn't matter how much he earned. What matters is how much he spent on support. Money he put into savings does not count as support he spent on himself.
- He lived with the parent (including temporary absences such as away at school) for more than half the year
*Here's a post on the five main points (see #2) on the 1098-T (See 2nd reply, at the post):
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/college-education/discussion/i-need-help-with-1098t-section-colleg...
