<p>Is there any financial aid or tax advantage to paying the spring tuition bill in the preceding year or pushing it to the beginning of January?</p>
<p>Don’t know about tax advantage, but most schools require the spring bill to be paid sometime in Dec, so that would make it part of the “preceding” year. You would end up paying two bills a year basically. One in summer, one in Dec for each year of school.</p>
<p>If the due date of your school’s Spring term bill is in January, you could pay it in December of this year and claim the American Opportunity Tax Credit for 2012.</p>
<p>AOTC may or may not available in 2013.</p>
<p>If you are going to remove funds from a 529 Plan to cover part of the tutition payment, just make sure that you pay the bill and remove the funds from the 529 Plan in the same calandar year. (Don’t do one action in one calandar year and the other action in another calendar year.)</p>
<p>Not holding my breath for AOTC in 2013…</p>