Scholarship posts the next tax year - tax liability?

[science man 29]

Hi all,

 

I finished grad school after the Spring 2012 semester.  Then I got a job and my tax liability went way up. 

 

All my tuition was paid for by my fellowship/scholarship.  But for my final semester, tuition was charged in 2011, but the scholarship didn't kick in until 2012.  So on my 1098-T, it looks like I have 1 semester of tuition scholarship that isn't matched with qualifying educational expenses.  I don't want to pay taxes on this money, because it's scholarship that went directly to tuition (even though it was in a different tax year - even though it was only 2 weeks apart!)

 

Has anyone had to deal with this before???  Is there a way to move either the tuition charge or the scholarship payment to the other tax year so that the IRS can see that they go together?  This is the main point of IRS pub 970 - scholarships for qualified tuition expenses are tax-free.  I don't want to pay taxes on this. 

 

Thanks in advance

[RandiZ]

Contact the IRS directly or an accountant. If you have a bill then you are good. You just can't claim the expence in two years. It should be easy to show that the 2011 tuition was not fully paid until you received the scholarship money in 2012. But there may be other legal issues I'm not aware of.

[TakeruK]

In Canada, you can carry over unused tuition tax credits from year to year (actually this is true for almost all of our tax credits). Maybe you can check if the IRS allows you to do the same thing?

Edited March 1, 2013 by TakeruK