Form 8863 Line 25

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
June 3, 2020
1 reply
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Hello,

Started doing my 2019 taxes and took a look at our 2018 taxes for reference and noticed that I may have inadvertently selected the wrong box for line 25 of Form 8863 for some reason. Does this mean I need to amend my 2018 taxes now?

Not A Product Question

Hal_Al

Employee

Yes, probably. It depends on the effect. Which way did you mark it wrong and did the result affect what you coulda woulda claimed.

Checking yes means you do not qualify for the more generous American Opportunity credit(AOC) ($2500 max) and TurboTax (TT) gave you (usually) the less generous Lifetime learning credit (LLC) ($2000 max). You are not required to amend, but you probably want to, to get more money back. The amount could easily be more than $500. For example, $4000 of expenses gets you $2500 AOC but only $800 LLC (it takes $10,000 expenses to get the maximum $2000 LLC).

Checking no means you do qualify for the American Opportunity credit and you probably need to pay back some of the credit.

tgore3rdAuthor

Hello, thank you for your quick response. So, I checked Yes (still not sure why). However, my spouse was in school only half-time in 2018 and the expenses were not that much. I went back into TurboTax and started the amendment process and it looks like if I did the amendment I would get what appears to be $245 back.

Also, my spouse was a full-time student in 2019 and I need to fill out this same form.

Would you recommend amending 2018, overall?

Hal_Al

Employee

Half time, or more, qualifies for the AOC. Any amount of school counts for the LLC.

The AOC is limited to being claimed four times per student. So, if there is a chance she can get more in the future, you may not want to claim AOC for 2018.

You need to look at the actual amounts. The $245 difference is not enough info to make a decision on