1098-E for adult children

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
April 8, 2025
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We took out loans to pay for our kids' educations when they were in college. They are now adults. We paid interest and received a 1098-E. According to what I have read, we should be eligible for a deduction, but TurboTax is not letting me take it because we have no dependents listed.

How can we claim this deduction in TurboTax?

TurboTax Home & Biz Windows

SharonD007

You can take the Student Loan Deduction if you are legally obligated to make the payments on the student loans. You don't have to have a dependent on your return to be legible to claim the student loan interest.

To qualify, the interest payments you make during the year must be on a student loan that you took out to put yourself, your dependents or spouse through school. For 2024, if you're filing as Single or Head of Household, your modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, has to be less than $95,000, or less than $195,000 if filing Married Filing Jointly, to deduct any student loan interest.

Please review the IRS Topic # 45 Student Loan Interest Deduction and the TurboTax article What is a 1098-E: Student Loan Interest? For more information,.

Go back and review your answers on the Personal profile screen to make sure that you didn't select that you could be claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax return. This may be the issue.

Select your name under My Info
Select Revisit
Scroll through the screens to ensure that you have the correct answers.

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Hal_Al

Employee

You can claim the interest deduction, if you meet the three requirements:

You paid the interest
You are legally obligated to pay it (co-signing counts)
The student was your dependent, at the time the loan was used to pay for qualified educational expenses (the TT pop up says “when you took out the loan”)

The student loan interest interview is just two questions; did you pay interest and then enter your 1098-E info. Even if you don't have a 1099-E, enter the info anyway.