Taxes for a teaching assistant & grad student

turbo93
Mon, 25 Jan 2016 03:02:51 +0000

My older daughter started grad school last fall and received a nice graduate teaching assistantship plus tuition waiver for most of her tuition. This was for fall semester 2015, and during spring of 2015 she was a senior undergrad and we were paying, she would not be ‘self sustaining’ by any stretch. I’m still paying her rent and she pays utilities, supplies and books, food, etc plus food for a very large cat (where’s FAFSA…) She made under $1k a month for fall semester. Her mom and I file married, both well employed and well taxed.

So, how do we file? she’s 23 and has one year of the HOPE credit left, so it would be beneficial she files as a ‘dependent’ since we paid for most of the year. She has tax withheld from her paycheck.

If she files alone, she can get some refund but can she claim the HOPE credit?

Can she file in our tax form (family tax form ) ???

Any suggestions?