<p>OK, so last year I read post #31 and thought it shed some light about whether second semester expenses and grants would be reported on the 1098 form:</p>
<p>D2s second semester started on Jan 17 this year. So I figure, OK, then the second semester FA won’t be released until 2012 and so won’t turn up on the 2011 1098 form. Being the crafty person I am, I delayed paying the tuition until Jan 2 so that the second semester tuition and grants would both show up on the same 2012 1098, rather than being split as has happened to me in the past.</p>
<p>WRONG on both counts.</p>
<p>The school posted both semester’s tuition and grants on the 2011 1098. My first mistake was with the tuition, as they reported tuition ‘billed’, not ‘received’, which was in 2011. And apparently they also released the FA in 2011, so the above quotation wasn’t accurate in our situation.</p>
<p>I would love to use the numbers provided on the 1098 and keep everything together for the whole school year in tax year 2011. It would just be cleaner and I can only take the AOC for 4 years anyway, so it doesn’t help to stretch this out over more tax years. The only problem that I actually paid tuition in 2012. Has anyone seen anything pertaining to this situation? Since the school considers the charges from last year, am I OK claiming it that way on my taxes?</p>
<p>p.s. Since qualified expenses were ca. 40k and grants were ca. 25k, I should receive the full AOC and D2 can put all the grants towards tuition and won’t have to pay taxes on them, correct?</p>
<p>Sorry, I have a total of 8 tax returns to fill out this year :(, so I’m trying to be sure I don’t make any giant mistakes.</p>
<p>I thought that you could split the info in the 1098s up so that they would match what you paid and when. Is that not possible? I use my actual expense figures for Happykid rather than the weird numbers in her 1098. To be perfectly honest, her 1098 for this year only remotely reflects the actual bills from her school. I’ve got all those, and all the receipts filed together in case anyone would ever ask to see them.</p>
<p>Sine you’ve probably shelled out way more in qualified expenses than you can get credit for, it would seem to me that as long as you only claim what you have receipts for or your own payment records for, all those other numbers really don’t matter at all.</p>
<p>Truly sympathetic about the taxes! Just finished ours today, and then updated the FAFSA. Am officially in love with the IRS’s own free file that lets you type your own numbers into those familiar IRS schedules, and then does the calculations. Just hands-on and transparent enough for the geek in me.</p>