This year, TurboTax recognized the fact that some graduate students receive 1099-MISC forms for their fellowship income and does not force you into a self-employment trap. Great! Unfortunately, TurboTax does not report the income as fellowship income but rather “Other” income. If you follow the steps that TurboTax suggests for 1099-MISC fellowship income, 1) you’ll have to pay $35 to upgrade the software and 2) your income will be reported in line 21 of the 1040 instead of line 7 with “SCH” next to it.
If your 1099-MISC box 3 income is from a fellowship or training grant, you will need to enter the 1099-MISC information into TurboTax piecemeal to report it as a fellowship/scholarship. Entering your 1099-MISC information into TurboTax will take two general steps: 1) entering the income from Box 3 (step 1) and 2) entering the tax withheld from Boxes 4 and 16 (steps 2 to 4).
1. First, follow the steps for entering undocumented fellowship/scholarship income into TurboTax to enter the income reported in Box 3 of your 1099-MISC.
2. Go to the ‘Federal Taxes’ and ‘Deductions & Credits’ tabs. Click ‘Check for other tax breaks’ and ‘Jump to the full list.’ Next to ‘Estimates and Other Taxes Paid,’ click ‘Show more’ and then press ‘Start’ next to ‘Other Income Taxes.’
3. On the ‘Income taxes paid’ page, scroll down to ‘Other Income Taxes Paid in 2015’ and then press ‘Start’ next to ‘Withholding not already entered on a W-2 or 1099.’
4. Enter the tax withheld from Boxes 4 and 16 of your 1099-MISC into the first Other Withholding fields and press ‘Continue.’
That’s it!
Check: Under tabs ‘My Account’ and ‘Tools,’ click ‘View Tax Summary’ and then ‘Preview My 1040’ to verify that the income you entered was added to the correct line on your tax return.
Parent post: Grad Student TurboTax Guide: 2015 Edition
We at Personal Finance for PhDs are not tax professionals, and none of the content in this section should be taken as advice for tax purposes.
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This was so helpful last year, have you figured out how to do it for 2017? The format is different and I haven’t been able to add my stipend 1099-Misc anywhere so that it doesn’t end up counting as self-employed!
I haven’t taken a look yet but thanks for the heads-up! I know I’ll have time by about mid-March to update this set of posts, but I’ll try to squeeze it in before then.
Hi Emily, I agree that an update would be greatly appreciated. I am going to try and figure it out myself, but if you have any guidance, that would be so helpful.
Go Duke!
Hello,
Did you figure out how to do it correctly? I’m still having trouble figuring it out.
Emily, I don’t suppose there will be an update?
Thank you!
I went through the instructions in this post (and the one linked from Step 1) and aside from some minor formatting changes in TurboTax between this year and last year I did think the instructions held up so I didn’t see a need to update the post. Can you give me more details about the roadblock you’re hitting? Feel free to email me (emily at pfforphds dot com) screenshots or something.
Hello,
I’m having such a hard time trying to do this, using turbo tax. I went to max fee for turbo tax but they keep putting it as additional job and what was a 3,000 + drops to 1,000+ and my state tax goes up to owe 1,000+ one I pay my fee I break even. Which is crazy since I have the max taken out of taxes (0) dependents even though I have 2 dependents.