<p>If your kid rents an apartment for school, and it’s a 12 month lease, but they aren’t in school for two of those months, can you use the whole 12 months when calculating your eligible expenses or only the 10 months?</p>
<p>Ummm… unless they’ve changes the rules, you can’t expense room and board fees, period. But maybe they changed the rules???</p>
<p>I’ve been through the AOC and I didn’t see R&B included in what can be expensed. Check the instructions - my guess is that they tell you explicitly that R&B can’t be counted for credits and deductions.</p>
<p>Oh, sorry, I should have said that it is for 529 expenses.</p>
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<p>The above is from IRS Publication 970, the definitive source. Look at note #3. I am interpreting it as being the amount that the room and board would cost if the student were living on campus. So, I don’t really think the time matters, rather the amount of money spent. At least that’s how we are interpreting it.</p>
<p>I agree. For 529 account purposes room and board for off campus students is based on the schools R&B expense from the COA. Now my daughter did attend summer classes at her school last year so I think if we had used 529 account funds we could have used the summer COA (which is not published anywhere, unlike the regular years COA) to justify a 529 account withdrawal. For FA purposes the summer is treated like a semester (at her school). We actually didn’t make a withdrawal as she received more summer aid than we expected so it was not necessary. But from my reading of the rules we could have otherwise.</p>
<p>If she had not done summer school we could not do that. </p>
<p>I am so glad they made the new rule for computers as hers just had to be replaced and it would have been hard to do currently if we had not been able to use 529 account funds.</p>
<p>I dunno. Was it even possible to rent for eight months only? If a Professor only covers the first three-quarters of textbook material do you deduct only 75% of the textbook cost?</p>
<p>^^^ the point is the allowable expense for 529 account purposes is not based on the actual rent paid. It is based on the R&B allowance contained in the school COA. If the rent is more than the R&B in the COA you can only claim up to the the COA amount.</p>
<p>Yes, the reason is that they are not going to let you use 529 dollars for a luxury condo or apartment, but rather the amount that you would have spent using university housing. You can use the amount on the COA for spring, summer and fall if the student was in school during the summer semester.</p>
<p>I am so glad we never saved money in a 529 acct. It seems like just another headache…</p>