<p>Well, I had a nice surprise when I received a 1098T yesterday – my daughter enrolled in an online UC extension course in December for $500, but she’s done no work for the course. (She has a year to complete and its self-paced - she is supposed to mail in assignments to the instructor as completed). So I was griping at her earlier about it, then voila, open the mail and I see I’ve got a $500 write off. OK, daughter foregiven. </p>
<p>Anyway, I think if you want to be safe, then you should claim numbers that show up on the 1098T and leave it at that. </p>
<p>I was audited once by IRS, and once they audit they go over everything in the return in great detail – discrepencies between various tax reporting documents they receive and amounts you claim are probably the type of things that trigger the audits and the questions. So aside from what you can “technically” get away with – for which the answer is, “I don’t know” … I wouldn’t fool around.</p>