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Weird Tax Situations for Fully Funded Grad Students

February 20, 2019 by Emily

“Actually, I get paid to go to school.” How many times have you said that to distant relatives and new acquaintances? If you look at it that way, being a funded grad student is a pretty sweet gig. But there are definitely downsides, like the low pay, sub-par benefits, and the weird tax situations that come with getting paid to be a grad student in the US. Receiving a 1098-T that has seemingly no basis in reality and having to incorporate it into your tax return – or worse, not receiving one – can become a real time- and energy-suck. The whole tax return support system seems to have been set up to help people who are in the red with their universities, not people who are in the black. Fortunately, there are solutions to these weird tax situations for fully funded grad students, and I’ve brought them to light for you in this point.

weird tax fully funded grad student

The points covered in this post are strictly to do with being a funded graduate student at a university.

Further reading:

  • How to Prepare Your Grad Student Tax Return
  • Why It Matters How You Are Paid
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #4: You Don’t Owe Any Taxes Because You Didn’t Receive Any Official Tax Forms
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #5: If Nothing Was Withheld, You Don’t Owe Any Tax
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #2: You Received a 1099-MISC; You Are Self-Employed

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You Might or Might Not Receive a 1098-T

Form 1098-T looks like a super official tax form, rather like Form W-2. However, I like to think of it as a communication between the university and the IRS that you, the grad student, have only been cc’d on. It’s not issued to help you properly report your income to the IRS. Its primary purpose is to let the IRS know that a student (or a student’s parents) might try to take an education tax break so that it can check the amount of the tax break claimed.

But fully funded grad students often do not claim net educational tax breaks. And if a tax break isn’t in order, it’s actually optional for the universities to even create a 1098-T for a student. So as a fully funded graduate student, you might receive a 1098-T or you might not; the choice belongs to your university.

Further reading: What Is a 1098-T?

Your 1098-T Might Mislead You

The only thing worse than not receiving a 1098-T is receiving one that is misleading.

Further reading: Form 1098-T: Still Causing Trouble for Funded Graduate Students

When a 1098-T is issued, it is supposed to contain all of the scholarships and grants that were processed through the graduate student’s account (Box 5) as well as the payments received (Box 1) for qualified tuition and related expenses. If Box 1 is greater than Box 5, an education tax break is likely in order, and if Box 5 is greater than Box 1, you may have some excess income to report.

Box 7

But wait! It’s not always that simple. See Box 7? If that is checked, we’ve run into a calendar year/academic year issue. Sometimes the tuition, etc. for a winter or spring semester/trimester (beginning in January through March) is charged in or before December of the prior year.

However, are the corresponding scholarships that pay those charges posted at the same time? They are supposed to be since Form 1098-T’s update for 2018, but in actuality some might be posted in that January to March window. In that case, the charges end up on the 1098-T for one calendar year while the corresponding scholarships end up on the 1098-T for the subsequent calendar year.

It’s not a good idea to take a tax break in one year only to have to pay a boatload of extra tax in the next year. The solution is to pair the charge with the scholarship that is earmarked for it. You do this by pulling the charge forward into the calendar year when the scholarship shows up.

Let Box 7 be a warning to you that you should double-check in which calendar year the charges and payments show up.

Box 1

In addition, your 1098-T might not list in Box 1 all the qualified education expenses you are eligible to claim… More on that later!

If You Have Scholarships and Qualified Education Expenses, You Can Choose between a Deduction and a Credit

When you have qualified education expenses such as tuition, you get to use them for some kind of tax break. That’s good news. The bad or at least complicating news is that you have to make a choice about how to use them. With some limitations, you get to choose being using them for a deduction and using them for a credit.

A quick review on deductions vs. credits: Deductions reduce your taxable income, while credits reduce your tax due.

How much a credit is worth to you is pretty easy to calculate. If it’s a $1,000 credit, you knock $1,000 off your tax due. (Be a bit careful because some credits are non-refundable, meaning that they stop working when your tax due hits $0.) If it’s a 20% credit for up to $1,000, if you take the full credit you’re knocking $200 off your tax.

How much a deduction is worth to you depends on your marginal tax rate. You have to multiply the amount of the deduction by your top marginal tax rate (or two tax rates, if the deduction makes you cross tax brackets). If your top tax bracket is the 10% tax bracket, a $2,000 deduction takes $200 off your federal tax due. You also should factor in your state marginal tax bracket if your state honors the deduction.

Further reading: Marginal Tax Brackets, Deductions, and Credits Explained Graphically

With your qualified education expenses, at the graduate level you will choose between ways to use them to reduce your tax burden, and ultimately you may use both. (I’m leaving out some limitations such as what qualifies as an educational institution, income ceilings, and what the scholarships can be used for, so look those up before you make a final decision.) You can:

  • Make some or all of your scholarship/grant income tax-free (i.e., take a deduction), or
  • Use the Lifetime Learning Credit (20% credit up to $10,000 for tax year 2017).

Please note that you can’t use the same qualified education expenses for more than one tax break.

You can find a complete discussion of how to choose among these three educational tax benefits in How to Prepare Your Grad Student Tax Return.

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You Have to Figure Out Your Own Qualified Education Expenses

Oh, and did I mention yet that the definition of a Qualified Education Expense is slightly different depending on the tax break you’re trying to take? Yeah, that’s another weird tax situation for fully funded grad students.

IRS Publication 970 p. 4:

“Even though the same term, such as qualified education expenses, is used to label a basic component of many of the education benefits, the same expenses aren’t necessarily allowed for each benefit.”

Tuition is considered a qualified education expense for both of the education tax benefits I listed above, but some additional expenses sometimes qualify, such as required fees and course-related expenses, e.g., books and supplies. These types of expenses might or might not appear on your 1098-T in Box 1. You should refer to Publication 970 for the full definitions of qualified education expenses under the three different education benefits.

Further reading: What Are Qualified Education Expenses?

One controversial point is whether your student health insurance premium is a required fee/qualified education expense for the purpose of making the scholarship that pays it tax-free. Insurance and student health fees, along with some other expenses, are explicitly disallowed as qualified education expenses for the Lifetime Learning Credit, but not for making scholarships tax-free.

You Have to Report Excess Scholarship Income

Funded graduate students with net fellowship/scholarship income have to report it on their tax returns. This is a weird tax situation because it’s uncommon at the undergraduate level, so many people, even professional tax preparers, don’t know that you’re supposed to do it. But now that you know, it’s actually quite easy to do.

You report your net scholarship/fellowship income in the same line on your tax return as you report your wages, e.g., Form 1040 Line 1. You also need to print SCH next to the line so the IRS knows part or all of your income is not reported on your W-2.

Further reading: Where to Report Your PhD Trainee Income on Your Tax Return

You Might or Might Not Be a Dependent of Your Parents

Because graduate students are students, they might be considered dependents of their parents (or another relative) for tax purposes. Many parents (and their tax preparers) try to claim their children as dependents without referencing the relevant definitions. If your parents assume you are a dependent but you believe you are not, together you can go through the definition carefully to make the final determination.

The conditions for being considered a dependent of your parent are:

  • You are age 23 or younger at the end of the calendar year.
  • You were enrolled as a student in at least 5 calendar months (doesn’t have to be consecutive).
  • You lived with your parents for at least half the year (being away for educational reasons can count as living with them).
  • You are not filing a joint return (with a caveat).
  • You must meet the “Support Test”: You did not provide more than half of your own support in the calendar year (see Publication 17 Worksheet 3-1).

For any years that the first three points above apply to you, you should fill out the Support Test to determine if you provided enough of your own support to qualify as independent. Keep in mind that education expenses count as “support” that you needed, but scholarships and fellowships that paid that support don’t count as being provided by you, the student.

You’re (Mostly) Not Paying FICA Tax

FICA (Social Security and Medicare) taxes seem like an unavoidable burden for employees and self-employed people. But even if you’re an employee of your university/graduate school (i.e., you receive a W-2 at tax time), you’re most likely not paying FICA tax because you have a student exemption. This exemption depends on both the primary function of the organization that employs you (i.e., educational) and your primary relationship with the organization (i.e., as a student rather than an employee).

The student exemption is almost universal for graduate students, but I have come across two exceptions that depend heavily on the exact wording of the exemption:

1) Graduate students at research institutions that are not primarily universities might not receive the exemption.

2) Graduate students, even at universities, whose primary relationship with their employer is as an employee rather than a student may pay FICA tax. For example, this might occur during the summer vs. during the academic year, and could happen without the student even perceiving a difference in roles. (This is not common; I’ve seen one example and it was for a senior graduate student at a public university.)

Graduate students receiving fellowships also do not pay FICA tax, but that is because they are not receiving wages rather than due to their student status.

You Cannot Take the Saver’s Credit

The Saver’s Credit is a very valuable credit that low-income earners can take if they contribute to a retirement account, such as an IRA. However, full-time students are not eligible for the credit.

Yes, there are a lot of weird tax situations for fully funded grad students. You have to do a bit of legwork instead of just blindly entering numbers from your 1098-T into tax software or ignoring your excess scholarship income. But if you break the issues down one by one, it’s actually straightforward to determine how to resolve them.

How to Prepare Your Grad Student Tax Return (Tax Year 2021)

January 24, 2019 by Emily

It’s common for funded graduate students to be a bit intimidated by preparing their own tax returns, particularly if they are inexperienced in doing so. The sources of PhD student funding, namely fellowship stipends and the scholarships or waivers that pay tuition and fees, are rather unusual, so most people and even most professional tax preparers don’t have any experience with them. The strategies that apply for undergraduate-level taxes are pretty different from those that apply for graduate-level taxes. But learning how to prepare your grad student tax return isn’t actually difficult, nor are the resulting steps complicated. There’s no reason to be intimidated! This post covers the essential points you need to know to prepare your grad student tax return, whether you do it manually, with tax software, or with the help of another person.

grad student tax return

This post is for tax year 2021. This post only covers federal tax due for graduate students in the United States who are citizens or residents for tax purposes; you may have additional state and local tax due. I am detailing only the aspects of preparing your grad student tax return that are specific to higher education; I am not covering more general tax information that applies to the population at large.

This post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute tax advice. It was last updated on 2/4/2022.

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Table of Contents (Links)

  • Preliminary Remarks
  • Collect All Your Income Sources
  • Categorize Your Income
  • Decide Which Education Tax Benefit(s) to Use on Your Grad Student Tax Return
  • Fill Out Your Grad Student Tax Return
  • Other Education Tax Benefits
  • If You Were Under Age 24
  • Conclusion

Preliminary Remarks

This post is a step-by-step guide on how to prepare your grad student tax return. I want to clear up some confusion right up front so that you can work your way through the guide without becoming sidetracked.

All of your income is potentially taxable. The purpose of your tax return is to show that you don’t have to pay tax on all of it. What graduate students don’t often realize is that they have income sources aside from the one(s) that hits their bank accounts or is reported on an official tax document, and they need to deal with those incomes on their tax returns.

You have your stipend/salary that serves as your take-home pay; this is potentially taxable, even if you don’t receive an official tax form about it and you didn’t have any taxes withheld. In fact, I’ll say you’re very likely to end up owing tax on it unless it’s quite low and/or you have a lot of tax deductions and/or credits.

You also have another kind of potentially taxable income if you are funded: the money that pays your tuition and fees. Your university might refer to this as scholarships, waivers, remissions, etc. Even if this money never passes through your personal bank account, it does pass through your name via your student account, which makes it potentially taxable to you as an individual. There is a very high chance you can use an education tax benefit to reduce your taxable income and/or reduce your tax due, but you have to sit down and do the arithmetic on it, not just assume that you won’t owe any tax on it. (In fact, doing the arithmetic may very well help you pay even less tax than if you ignored it!) This guide shows you exactly how to do that.

Further reading:

  • Weird Tax Situations for Fully Funded Graduate Students
  • Weird Tax Situations for Fellowship Recipients
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #1: You Don’t Have to Pay Income Tax
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #4: You Don’t Owe Any Tax Because You Didn’t Receive Any Official Tax Forms
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #5: If Nothing Was Withheld, You Don’t Owe Any Tax
  • How to Work with a Tax Preparer When You Have Fellowship and/or Scholarship Income

This article includes publicly available information on taxes for students and fellowship recipients, largely derived from IRS Publication 970 and my examinations of the tax policies of many universities across the US.

If you want a more in-depth and intuitive presentation of this material, designed for you to prepare your tax return as you go through it, that includes my interpretations of the tricky IRS language and the insight I gained from hiring a CPA to research grad student taxes…

Please consider joining my tax workshop. It comprises pre-recorded videos, worksheets, and live Q&A calls with me.

Click here to learn more about the grad student tax return workshop.

Collect All Your Income Sources

The first step to prepare your grad student tax return, and any tax return, is to collect all your income sources. These income sources include wages as well as non-wage income such as interest and investment income and self-employment income, but does not include loan disbursements.

With respect to your grad student status, you have income sources that are unusual and may be officially reported to you or not (so check for all of them):

  1. Your employee income for your stipend or salary will be reported to you on a Form W-2. This typically comes from a teaching assistantship, research assistantship, or graduate assistantship.
  2. Your awarded income that pays your stipend or salary may be reported to you on a 1098-T in Box 5, on a 1099-MISC in Box 3, on a Form 1099-NEC in Box 1, on a courtesy letter, or not at all. Awarded income typically comes from fellowships, training grants, and awards. If your university does not send you any documentation of your fellowship income for 2021, you have to sum all the payments you received to figure out what it was.
  3. Your awarded income that pays your education expenses may be reported to you on a 1098-T in Box 5 or not at all. Awarded income typically comes from scholarships, waivers, remissions, reductions, and awards. If you did not receive a 1098-T from your university, you should look at the transactions in your student account (e.g., Bursar’s account, Cashier’s account) to see the money posted there on your behalf.

Your university may not use the exact terminology that I did, but the tax forms and documentation (or lack thereof) will help you differentiate among the three types.

Further reading:

  • The Five Numbers Required for a Complete Grad Student Tax Return
  • What Is a 1098-T?
  • What Is a 1099-MISC?
  • What Is a Courtesy Letter?
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #2: You Received a 1099-MISC; You Are Self-Employed

At this stage, you may be thinking that the total of all this income is way too high. There’s no way you want to pay tax on all this income! Stick with me: We are going to reduce either your taxable income or your tax due in a subsequent step. But for now, work with all of your incomes.

Would you like the opportunity to ask me a question about your tax situation? I hold monthly live Q&A calls throughout tax season for my workshop participants!

Click here to learn more about the tax return workshop.

Categorize Your Income

Your grad student income (assistantship pay, fellowships, scholarships, etc.) falls into two broad categories: employee income and awarded income.

Employee income is easy to define, as you will receive a W-2 for it.

Awarded income is best defined as any grad student-related income that is reported somewhere other than a W-2 or not reported. According to the IRS, it is “various types of educational assistance you may receive if you are studying, teaching, or researching in the United States… includ[ing] scholarships, fellowship grants, need-based education grants, qualified tuition reductions” (Publication 970 p. 5), but the way the IRS uses those terms doesn’t completely match how we use the terms in academia.

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Decide Which Education Tax Benefit(s) to Use on Your Grad Student Tax Return

For tax year 2021, there are two* relevant education tax benefits that you can access to reduce your tax burden: making awarded income tax-free and the Lifetime Learning Credit.

You use your qualified education expenses (QEEs) to take a deduction (by either making your awarded income tax-free) or take a credit (by taking the Lifetime Learning Credit). A tax deduction reduces your taxable income, while a tax credit reduces your tax due directly. You can apply either one or both of these benefits, but you have to use different QEE dollars.

(* There is one more education tax benefit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which is each beneficial for a very small percentage of graduate students. See the section at the end of the article for more details on this benefit and whether it might apply to you.)

Qualified Education Expenses

The definition of a QEE changes slightly for each tax benefit. From Publication 970 p. 4:

“Even though the same term, such as qualified education expenses, is used to label a basic component of many of the education benefits, the same expenses aren’t necessarily allowed for each benefit.”

Tuition at an eligible education institution is a QEE for both tax benefits (although to make awarded income tax-free you have to be a degree candidate). “Required fees” are QEEs for making awarded income tax-free. The Lifetime Learning Credit uses the wording “the fees and expenses [that] must be paid to the institution for enrollment or attendance” to define a QEE. Other fees and expenses beyond tuition may be QEEs; you should refer to the definition of a QEE with respect to each benefit.

If you received a 1098-T from your university, Box 1 will contain the sum of the payments for your the “qualified tuition and related expenses” that were processed by the office at your university that prepared the form. You may have additional QEEs not reported on the Form 1098-T, because the qualified tuition and related expenses on Form 1098-T do not include “charges and fees for room, board, insurance, medical expenses (including student health fees), transportation, and similar personal, living, or family expenses” (Form 1098-T Instructions, p. 2)

Further reading: What Is a 1098-T?

Whether you received a 1098-T or not, you should examine the transactions in your student account to make the final determination about the qualified education expenses that were processed by that office.

You may have additional QEEs not reported on your 1098-T or in your student account, such as required course-related expenses (keep your receipts!).

It’s very worthwhile to examine the definition of a QEE because uncovering additional QEEs almost always translates to a lower tax liability.

Make Awarded Income Tax-Free

The awarded income that you receive can directly cancel against your QEEs to become tax-free. For example, if the tuition that you are charged and the scholarship or tuition reduction that pays it are exactly the same amount, they net to zero and you won’t be taxed on that portion of your awarded income. In fact, you don’t even have to show the IRS this calculation; you only have to report the portion of your awarded income that exceeds your QEEs.

The definition of a QEE to make awarded income tax-free is (excerpted from Publication 970 Chapter 1 p. 6):

Qualified education expenses. For purposes of tax-free scholarships and fellowship grants, these are expenses for:

  • Tuition and fees required to enroll at or attend an eligible educational institution; and
  • Course-related expenses, such as fees, books, supplies, and equipment that are required for the courses at the eligible educational institution. These items must be required of all students in your course of instruction.

Expenses that don’t qualify. Qualified education expenses don’t include the cost of:

  • Room and board,
  • Travel,
  • Research,
  • Clerical help, or
  • Equipment and other expenses that aren’t required for enrollment in or attendance at an eligible educational institution.“

Further reading: Grad Student Tax Lie #3: You Can Deduct Tuition, Even If You Didn’t Pay It

Are you unsure whether one of your expenses is a “qualified education expense” to net against awarded income? In my tax workshop, I present the common higher education-related expenses that graduate students incur and tell you whether or not they are QEEs under each of the education tax benefits.

Click here to learn more about the tax return workshop.

Lifetime Learning Credit

The Lifetime Learning Credit reduces your tax burden and may be beneficial to apply if 1) your QEEs exceed your awarded income and/or 2) a 20% credit is more valuable to you than a deduction.

The Lifetime Learning Credit is a 20% credit; that means that if you use $1,000 in QEE expenses for the Lifetime Learning Credit, your tax due will be reduced by $200. There is a $10,000 limit on QEEs that can be used for the Lifetime Learning Credit, so the maximum benefit is $2,000 even if you have additional QEEs.

The modified adjust gross income phase-out for this deduction begins at $80,000 for a single person and $160,000 for a married couple filing jointly.

The definition of a QEE for the Lifetime Learning Credit is (excerpted from Publication 970 Chapter 3 p. 24-25, 29):

“Qualified Education Expenses

For purposes of the lifetime learning credit, qualified education expenses are tuition and certain related expenses required for enrollment in a course at an eligible educational institution. The course must be either part of a postsecondary degree program or taken by the student to acquire or improve job skills.

Related expenses. Student activity fees and expenses for course-related books, supplies, and equipment are included in qualified education expenses only if the fees and expenses must be paid to the institution for enrollment or attendance.

Expenses That Don’t Qualify

Qualified education expenses don’t include amounts paid for:

  • Insurance;
  • Medical expenses (including student health fees);
  • Room and board;
  • Transportation; or
  • Similar personal, living, or family expenses.

This is true even if the amount must be paid to the institution as a condition of enrollment or attendance.“

If you take the Lifetime Learning Credit, you must fill out and file Form 8863.

How to Decide Which Tax Benefit to Prioritize on Your Grad Student Tax Return

Do you remember how on multiple choice tests you are instructed to choose the “best” answer, not necessary the (one and only) “correct” answer? There are multiple acceptable ways to prepare your grad student tax return. At the end of the day, you can figure out the “best” answer—the one that results in the lowest tax burden for you—but it may very well take calculating your tax due with each of the different approaches. I do think it’s worth delving into the details of this decision, because may be possible to reduce your tax liability by as much as $800!

This section assumes that you are eligible for both of the education tax benefits (based on your income, the status of your educational institution, your student status, etc.); if you are ineligible for one or the other, that makes the decision all the easier. Please note that if you elect to apply the Lifetime Learning Credit when you could have made a scholarship tax-free using a matched QEE, that scholarship (by its terms) has to be eligible to be applied to a non-QEE. If a scholarship, for example, is earmarked only for paying a QEE such as tuition, then you must use your tuition QEE to make it tax-free; the scholarship cannot be included in taxable income and the QEE used for the Lifetime Learning Credit.

Essentially, you will choose which education tax benefit to apply first, tax-free scholarships and fellowships or the Lifetime Learning Credit. The one you apply first should be whichever minimizes your tax liability.

The following method will give you a first-pass indication of which benefit is better for you:

As tax-free scholarships and fellowships is a tax deduction, it is “worth” the amount of your QEEs or awarded income (whichever is lower) multiplied by the sum of your federal, state, and local marginal income tax brackets.

As the Lifetime Learning Credit is a credit, it is worth its face value, which is 20% of the QEEs you apply to it up to $10,000.

Ask yourself if the sum of your marginal tax brackets is more or less than 20%.

If the sum is greater than 20%, that indicates you should apply your QEEs first to make as much of your awarded income tax-free as possible. If you have any remaining QEEs, apply them to the Lifetime Learning Credit (up to $10,000 of QEEs).

If the sum is less than 20%, that indicates you should apply your QEEs first to the Lifetime Learning Credit (up to $10,000 of QEEs). If you have any remaining QEEs, use them to make as much of your awarded income pay tax-free as possible.

When in doubt, calculate your tax due under both methods. In some situations, the above rule of thumb will not indicate the correct method to minimize your tax burden. For example, with the Lifetime Learning Credit-first method, you report a higher income than you would have if you used the tax-free scholarships and fellowships method, which might make you ineligible for certain tax benefits on other parts of your return, e.g., the Earned Income Credit. It’s imperative to calculate not just your total federal tax due under each method but your state and local tax due as well. Not all states treat scholarships and fellowships as ordinary income, for example.

Are you intrigued by this LLC-first method and wondering if it is advantageous for you? I explain the eligibility, calculations, and downstream effects on your tax return in much more detail in my tax workshop.

Click here to learn more about the tax return workshop.

The Numbers You Need for Your Tax Return

Once you have decided how you would like to use your QEEs, you should bring a few numbers with you to enter into your federal tax return:

  • Your total amount of employee income (W-2 pay with respect to your grad student income),
  • Your net awarded income (after applying your QEEs to reduce it), and
  • The amount of your Lifetime Learning Credit (maximum $2,000) from Form 8863.

You now have an idea of the actions to take and decisions to make regarding your grad student tax return. I know it can seem overwhelming! I don’t want you to spend hours and hours feeling frustrated paging through IRS documentation or wrestling with tax software.

Commit a couple hours to taking my tax return workshop, feel confident and supported, and emerge with an accurate and minimized tax return!

Click here to learn more about the grad student tax return workshop.

Fill Out Your Grad Student Tax Return

With respect to your taxable grad student income, Lifetime Learning Credit, and tax already paid, how to report them on your tax return is very straightforward. Of course, you will fill out the rest of your tax return by following the form instructions; this section only relates to the grad student aspects of your return.

Report Your Income

Your employee income and net awarded income will be summed and reported as a single figure in the wages line of your tax return. (Add to this figure any other wages as well according to the form instructions.)

On Form 1040, you will write your income in Line 1. If your grad student income includes any awarded income, write “SCH” and the amount of net awarded income in the line next to the number. The purpose of this note is to alert the IRS that there is no W-2 associated with all or part of the income reported on that line.

Further reading: Where to Report Your PhD Trainee Income on Your Tax Return

Report Your Lifetime Learning Credit

Report your Lifetime Learning Credit on Line 3 of Form 1040 Schedule 3; you will also file Form 8863. The amount of this credit will directly reduce your tax due.

Report Your Tax Already Paid

If you received a W-2 and/or 1099-MISC for part or all of your grad student income, you will enter the amount of federal tax that was withheld from your income in Line 25 of Form 1040.

Further reading: Grad Student Tax Lie #5: If Nothing Was Withheld, You Don’t Owe Any Tax

If you paid quarterly estimated tax on your fellowship income, report the total of the estimated tax payments you made in Line 26 of Form 1040.

Other Education Tax Benefits

I have omitted from detailed discussion two education tax benefits that you may be familiar with from past experiences preparing your tax return.

American Opportunity Tax Credit

The American Opportunity Tax Credit is typically used during the undergraduate years only. It can be claimed in only 4 tax years and not in any tax year after the one in which you finish your first four years of postsecondary education. Therefore, if you graduated from college in 2020 (in four years) and you (or your parents) claimed the American Opportunity Tax Credit in no more than 3 previous tax years (e.g., freshman spring/sophomore fall, sophomore spring/junior fall, and junior spring/senior fall but not freshman fall), you may be eligible to claim it in 2020.

The American Opportunity Tax Credit is the most valuable education tax benefit available, so if you are eligible for it, you will almost certainly want to use it to the greatest degree you can. It is a 100% credit on up to $2,000 of QEEs and a 25% credit on up to $2,000 of QEEs.

The definition of a QEE for the American Opportunity Tax Credit is distinct from the definition for other education tax benefits.

If you claim the American Opportunity Tax Credit, you cannot use the Lifetime Learning Credit or the Tuition and Fees Deduction. If you are considered a dependent on your parents’ tax return in 2020, you cannot claim the credit (your parents would).

To claim the American Opportunity Tax Credit, you need to fill out and file Form 8863.

Tuition and Fees Deduction

The Tuition and Fees Deduction expired at the end of 2020.

Would you like the opportunity to ask me a question about your tax situation? I hold monthly live Q&A calls throughout tax season for my workshop participants!

Click here to learn more about the tax return workshop.

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If You Were Under Age 24

If you were age 23 or younger on December 31, 2021 and a full-time student for at least five months of the year, you may be subject to an alternative, higher tax known as the Kiddie Tax. This could be the case if your income was primary awarded income.

Further reading: Fellowship Income Can Trigger the Kiddie Tax

As a full-time student (for at least part of 5 calendar months) and under age 24, your parents (or another relative) might also be able to claim you as a dependent, though you will have to pass the ‘residency test’ and ‘support test.’

One entire video of my tax return workshop is devoted to the special tax considerations of graduate students under the age of 24. Please consider joining the workshop for much more details about the Kiddie Tax and dependency.

Click here to learn more about the tax return workshop.

Conclusion

The most challenging aspect of this process is simply knowing the various aspects that you have to consider. The most complicated aspect is deciding for which education benefit to use your QEEs, but you can always take the default option of prioritizing making your awarded income tax-free if you don’t want to do the extra calculations.

Best of luck to you as you prepare your grad student tax return this year! If you need additional support:

  1. Download my tax “cheat sheet”
  2. Register for my workshop (includes live Q&As!) for only $28

Please consider sharing this post with your peers through social media or a list-serv!

The First Step to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (2018)

January 9, 2019 by Emily

There is one vital step grad students need to take when starting to prepare their tax returns. It’s a super simple step, but most often overlooked, and skipping it can lead to an inaccurate return or even overpaying tax. This is the step that you take before you start feeding any numbers to your 1040, your tax software, or your tax preparer, and it is to find and categorize all of your income sources (funded grad students have at least two!).

If you found this video insightful and you want to take the next step to completing your tax return – including one trick to reduce your tax due that your tax software or tax preparer can easily miss – register for my workshop, “How to Complete Your 2019 PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!).”

grad student tax return step

What Method Should You Use to Prepare Your Tax Return?

March 5, 2018 by Emily

I hope that this is news to no one in the US: Grad student stipends are taxable and so is postdoc income, even if you don’t have taxes withheld or receive an official tax form! You may feel that it’s adding insult to injury to have to pay tax on a lower income, and it is possible that you will not owe any tax if your income is low enough and/or you have enough credits and deductions, but you should still prepare a tax return every year. You need to start from the assumption that all of your income is taxable and use your tax return to reduce your tax burden as much as you can. (This post focuses on US federal taxes for citizens/residents, though international students and postdocs paid in the US will benefit as well.)

A version of this post first appeared on GradHacker.

tax return method

Further reading:

  • Do I Have to Pay Income Tax?
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #4: You Don’t Owe Any Taxes Because You Didn’t Receive Any Official Tax Forms
  • Grad Student Tax Lie #5: If Nothing Was Withheld, You Don’t Owe Any Tax

Early-career PhDs can turn to one of four sources to prepare their tax returns: themselves, tax software, a relative or friend, or a professional tax preparer. There are pros and cons to each method, and the ultimate choice of which method(s) to use will depend on the complexity of your tax situation, the resources available to you, and your willingness to learn about this important subject.

Further reading: How Do I Prepare My Taxes during Filing Season?

One very important point to know about your tax return is that you are ultimately responsible for its accuracy. That means that whatever method you use, you must check your tax return through to make sure everything is correct. If you have no knowledge of taxes or have been misled by common tax lies told to graduate students, that will be very difficult; identifying all your income sources properly will be challenging and incompetence on the part of your tax preparer may slip by you.

Further reading: Grad Students, Don’t Believe these Tax Lies!

Your tax return is also only as good as the data you provide to it (GIGO!). If you overlook a part of your income, for instance because you received no official tax form for it, it doesn’t matter what method you use – your tax return will be inaccurate. This is particularly a problem for grad students. Take the time before you even choose your method to assess what sources of income you had and what forms you have or have not received for them. You can learn all about how to handle your various sources of grad student and postdoc income in my free tax webinar this week, which will be helpful no matter which method you ultimately use to prepare your tax return.

Further reading: How to Prepare Your Grad Student Tax Return

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Prepare Your Tax Return Manually

Believe it or not, often the quickest and easiest way to prepare your tax return is to just do it yourself, manually. This is particularly true if you have a simple tax situation, as many young people do. It will probably take an investment of several hours to understand the tax code at a high level and how your income and expenses fit into it the first time you prepare your own tax return. However, subsequent simple or slightly more complicated tax returns should be very quick! (Tip: Instead of using paper and ink, prepare your tax return with the IRS’s Free Fillable Forms.)

Pros:

  • If you learn about the tax code well enough to prepare a simple return (and really, all it takes is the ability to follow instructions and do arithmetic), you will go through your life with far more knowledge about income taxes than the average citizen. Taxes do not have to be mystifying.
  • Only costs your time.

Cons:

  • You don’t know what you don’t know. Without a knowledgeable source keeping an eye on your return, you may miss details such as a credit or deduction that you are eligible for.
  • You may make a mistake, either because of your lack of knowledge and experience or simply a math error.

Prepare Your Tax Return Using Tax Software

I’d bet that the majority of early-career PhDs use tax software (e.g., TurboTax, TaxACT, H&R Block) to prepare their returns. It’s a low-cost way of generating a meticulously prepared return. (Tip: The IRS provides free tax software to individuals who earned less than $66,000 in 2017.)

This is the trickiest method to use if you don’t understand your various sources of income well because without tax forms associated with some of the you may accidentally omit or misrepresent them. Software also tends to misinterpret some forms grad students commonly receive, such as categorizing grad students who receive 1099-MISCs as self-employed. Graduate students and postdocs will probably struggle the most with understanding how to enter their non-compensatory pay (fellowships and scholarships), depending on the documentation they receive.

Further reading: Grad Student Tax Lie #2: You Received a 1099-MISC; You Are Self-Employed

Pros:

  • Often free, and if not still relatively low-cost.
  • Generally thorough and trustworthy if you enter your data correctly.

Cons:

  • Can be more time-consuming to answer the software’s thorough questioning than just skipping to the relevant data entry points if you have a simple situation.
  • The software is not designed with grad student income in mind, so it can be difficult or confusing to enter non-compensatory pay, depending on the forms or lack of forms your university sends you.
  • Perhaps not sufficient for complicated tax situations.

Get a Relative or Friend to Prepare Your Tax Return

It’s fairly common for parents or relatives to (help) prepare children’s tax returns while they are dependents, and it may be tempting to continue that trend into grad school (or beyond!). However, this method suffers from the combined downsides of all the other methods while removing your direct oversight of the situation.

Pros:

  • Likely free and a low time investment.
  • He/she is probably more generally knowledgeable about the tax code than you are.

Cons:

  • While your parents may be competent in preparing their own tax returns as employees or business owners and yours as a college student, they have likely never been exposed to the unusual income reporting strategies employed by universities with respect to their grad students and postdocs.
  • You still have to know enough about the tax code to check their work.

Outsource Your Tax Return to a Professional Tax Preparer

I have to admit a bit of bias against using a professional tax preparer as a grad student, unless your life is so complicated that you need one and you have been assured that they know how to handle grad student income. For postdocs and early-career PhDs who receive compensatory pay, professional tax preparers should be quite competent, and probably more needed as your financial life gains complexity. As a person who speaks and writes about personal finance professionally, I have heard many, many horror stories of professional tax preparers bungling grad student income tax returns, causing the grad student to radically over- or underpay their taxes and forcing them to file amended returns once they catch the mistake – and those are just from the grad students who did catch the mistake (or who described the situation well enough for me to catch it)! I’m sure there are also many cases where everything went perfectly with the return, but I don’t tend to hear about those. The point is that grad students are not a common client type for professional tax preparers, so they are not necessarily knowledgeable about the special situation and may not notice the nuances or take the time to learn about them. Again, the responsibility is still on your shoulders to ensure the correctness of the return.

Further reading: How to Work with a Tax Preparer when You Have Fellowship and/or Scholarship Income

Pros:

  • Thorough, and possibly the best option for complicated tax situations.
  • Low time investment.

Cons:

  • Most expensive option unless you use some sort of free clinic.
  • As they are usually unfamiliar with grad student taxes (unless you screened for this), you still have to know enough about the tax code to check their work.

Free Tax Webinar for Grad Students and Postdocs

Emily Roberts presented a tax webinar for funded grad students and postdocs (US domestic) on March 9, 2018.

Register for the webinar to receive a replay!

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Conclusion

Everyone should know what information should be included in their tax returns, roughly how to calculate their taxable income, and where their income should be reported on a 1040 (or equivalent). This is the basic amount of information needed to generate and check a tax return with respect to your income. I’ll add on here that to be an informed citizen you should also know the difference between a deduction and credit and how marginal tax brackets work.

Further reading: Marginal Tax Brackets, Deductions, and Credits Explained Graphically

If you have a simple life (e.g., not itemizing deductions, not self-employed), it may be worthwhile to invest the time necessary to prepare your return manually this year, because learning that much will be a real time-saver in years to come. Alternatively, you can use tax software in an early year to help you learn about the tax code, and once you’ve grasped the concepts, use them in future years to prepare your return manually.

If you have a complicated life (e.g., itemizing deductions, marriage and children, home ownership, self-employment, investment income, traditional retirement accounts), it’s probably not worth your time to prepare your return yourself with confidence that you haven’t missed anything (unless you enjoy doing it yourself), so paying for tax software or a tax preparer is likely the better choice.

Whatever you do, don’t wait until April 16 to start preparing your taxes using any of these methods!

Further reading: How to Prepare Your Grad Student Tax Return

My Choice

My method of choice during grad school and since has been to prepare my tax return manually and using tax software each year. First, I draft my return myself, which necessitates learning a little something new about the tax code. Second, I use tax software to prepare my return, which alerts me to anything I overlooked that I could incorporate into my manual return. Third, I submit the manual return I prepared – I have more confidence in the correctness of that version!

How to Work with a Tax Preparer when You Have Fellowship and/or Scholarship Income

January 29, 2018 by Emily

When preparing your tax returns each year, you have three basic options: do it yourself (manually), use tax software, and employ a tax preparer (e.g., certified public accountant (CPA), enrolled agent, human worker at H&R Block). The least common approach for a grad student or postdoc is to hire a human professional tax preparer, but it is warranted in certain circumstances. If you do work with a tax preparer, it’s vital to make sure they properly account for the peculiarities of grad student (and sometimes postdoc) income, namely fellowship and scholarship income.

Please note that this article is relevant for the 2017 tax year only. With the tax overhaul starting in 2018, fellowship/scholarship income may be calculated slightly differently. I will update this article for tax year 2018 later in the 2018 calendar year.

Should I Use a Professional Tax Preparer?

My anecdotal observation is that grad students and postdocs most commonly use tax software to prepare their returns. I am actually a proponent of trainees with simple financial lives preparing their tax returns manually as I think there is less room for error and less effort required.

It is a good idea for you to consider using a professional tax preparer if you have a complicated financial life, need tax planning advice, and/or don’t want to spend time preparing your return manually or with software. Of course, a professional tax preparer comes with the highest price tag of all of the options, so the cost has to be worthwhile to you.

Indications that you have a complicated financial life that perhaps warrants using a professional tax preparer are:

  • You plan to itemize your deductions
  • You or your spouse owns a business
  • You have significant non-wage income (aside from fellowships), e.g., taxable investment income
  • You had a major life event this year, e.g., getting married, having a child, buying a home, receiving an inheritance

I do not think that a person whose only tax complexity is fellowship or scholarship income needs to use a tax preparer. This person would be better off preparing her return manually or with software. Fellowship and scholarship income at the graduate and postdoc level can appear confusing to tax software or professionals who are unfamiliar with it or only understand it with respect to college students. But in reality, incorporating into your tax return is very straightforward and a professional tax preparer is not necessary. As the recipient of the fellowship or scholarship income, you should know how to calculate and report your taxable fellowship/scholarship income whether you prepare your return manually or not. It is your responsibility to make sure your tax return is correct, and checking the work of the tax software or preparer that you engage goes a long way to ensuring that it is.

Interview Questions Your Potential Tax Preparer

If you decide to use a professional tax preparer, you should interview the people you are considering hiring. I would not walk into a tax preparation agency and have my tax return prepared by the first available worker. Naturally, you will vet the tax preparer regarding all the financial complexities that caused you to seek her out.

Further reading: 11 Questions to Ask When Hiring a Tax Preparer

In addition, incorporate a form of this set of questions regarding fellowship/scholarship income (as they apply to your situation):

  1. Have you ever prepared or do you regularly prepare tax returns for graduate students with scholarship income / graduate students or postdocs receiving fellowships?
  2. Are you familiar with how to calculate and report scholarship and fellowship income in excess of qualified education expenses?
  3. (If 2 is yes) Will you please briefly explain how you do that?
  4. (If 2 is no) Are you willing to learn about this issue prior to working on my return?

Yes, I am suggesting that you quiz your tax preparer, especially if he claims he regularly prepares these types of returns. I think the answer to question 3 should sound something like this:

I add up all the amounts of fellowship and scholarship income. Often these are found on a 1098-T or courtesy letter, but I will also ask you to tell me about income not found there. Then, I determine if it is most advantageous to use your qualified education expenses [grad students only] from your 1098-T to make your scholarship/fellowship income tax-free or if it is better to use the Lifetime Learning Credit or Tuition and Fees Deduction. Your net taxable scholarship and fellowship income goes on the 1040 in the Wages line/Line 7, and if I used the Lifetime Learning Credit or Tuition and Fees Deduction I’ll prepare the appropriate forms.

I don’t think you need to eliminate from consideration a tax preparer who is not currently versed in how to handle scholarship/fellowship income, but in that case you need to believe that she is sincere in her promise to learn about it before diving into your return. I do think it’s dealbreaker if she gives a wildly incorrect answer (e.g., “scholarship/fellowship income isn’t taxable”) and expresses no uncertainty or willingness to devote time to understanding the issue when corrected.

A special note for those whose fellowship income is reported on a 1099-MISC: While rare, a few universities report fellowship stipends on Form 1099-MISC in Box 3. This can be confusing for tax preparers and software because Form 1099-MISC is more typically used for self-employment income (in Box 7). However, the use of the 1099-MISC does not mean that you as a grad student or postdoc are self-employed. Once you point this out to your tax preparer, he should confirm that he will treat it as scholarship/fellowship income as above.

Reference on Scholarship/Fellowship Income

If your tax preparer is not already familiar with how to handle excess fellowship/scholarship income, point her to Publication 970 Chapters 1, 3, and 6 (Chapter 1 being the most salient).

Check Their Work!

You should perform a super simple check when your tax preparer sends you your tax return to make sure the reporting of your fellowship/scholarship income went well. Your net scholarship/fellowship income should be added into the rest of your household wage income in Line 7 of your 1040, and “SCH” should be written next to it (possibly with that net scholarship/fellowship amount).

What I mean by net scholarship/fellowship income is your total scholarship/fellowship income less the qualified education expenses that your preparer used to make your scholarship/fellowship income tax-free. (For postdocs, the gross and net amount should be the same as you were not a student.)

For example: Let’s say you had a $25,000 fellowship and $25,000 of scholarship income that went toward paying $24,000 of qualified education expenses (tuition and required fees). The last $1,000 of scholarship income went to a non-required fee. Your net scholarship/fellowship income would be $26,000. (That is, unless your tax preparer decided to report a higher net scholarship/fellowship income in favor of taking the Lifetime Learning Credit. The addition to your net scholarship/fellowship income should equal the amount claimed for the Lifetime Learning Credit.)

Further reading: Grad Student Tax Lie #6: You Don’t Have to Pay Tax on the Scholarship that Pays Your Health Insurance Premium

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Parting Thoughts

I’m actually quite passionate about the issue of the use of professional tax preparers and scholarship/fellowship income.

In my position as a personal finance blogger-turned-speaker, I’ve heard at least a dozen personal anecdotes from graduate students who used professional tax preparers or services like H&R Block or VITA and caught major errors in how their scholarship and/or fellowship income was calculated and reported.

In many cases, the miscalculated amount of tax due was radically higher (e.g., paying self-employment tax, paying tax on income that should have been made tax-free) or radically lower (e.g., no tax form means no income to report) than the true amount of tax due. These mistakes, frequently caught years later, sometimes cost the student dearly in time and money spent to correct them. I shudder to think of all the mistakes that were not caught by the student, especially regarding overpayment.

I don’t share my observations with you to deter you from using a professional tax preparer, but only to caution you that the interview process and double-checking their work is very important. You can’t afford to be ignorant about how scholarship/fellowship income should be calculated and reported, even if you decide to outsource the tax return preparation process.

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