Graduate Student Stipend Questions

I assume you poured some forms into your tax software and out popped a 1040, and you expect us to reverse engineer the 1040 and guess what's going on?

If the scholarship income is from a 1098T and is the amount by which scholarship money received or credited to you exceeds the box 1 billed amount, you can bring it down by subtracting the amount you paid for books and fees.

But unless the scholarship amount is on a W-2m it is not earned income in spite of showing up on line 7 if the 1040.

Tell me where the 13000 line 7 amount that exceeeds the scholarship amount came from?

If line 7 is right, your income, as a single taxpayer with no dependents is too high for EIC unless you have nondependent qualifying children for EIC.

So chances are EIC is just not in your picture no mayyer how the scholarship goes.

Sorry, I can provide any additional information that would help you sort this out. The $15,070 for "SCH" was the amount of stipend money that not taxed (i.e. when I was a graduate trainee). For clarification, from my school's website:

Graduate Student Trainee: Graduate Student Trainees are paid monthly from Fellowship or Scholarship resources. Graduate Student Trainees are not considered to be employees. This appointment is intended to allow the individual to be a full time student. No past, present, or future services are required as a condition of receiving this appointment.

...versus the last 4 months of the year, where I became a Graduate Research Assistant and was taxed:

Graduate Research Assistant (GRA): GRA activities include, but are not limited to, duties primarily in support of fundamental and applied research (e.g. conducting experiments, analyzing data, and drafting research publications for professional journals or conferences).

So I don't earn income in the eyes of the IRA eligibility, but I do for the EIC? AKA, the worst of both worlds?

it would really help to share with us the starting point - not the end game - what exactly did you receive in docs and their "box" values...

W2 ?

since you showed line 62 - withholding - that should have only come from a real W2 - or your 1099 investments -

The withholding I had to calculate from my YTD payslips. My stipend and tuition are shown on a 1098-T. Here's a link:

That just sounds wrong.

If federal income tax was withheld from your payslips, you should have received a W-2 or just possibly a 1099-Misc, containing that amount.

We are talking of tax year 2011? If this is tax year 2012, they have until end-January to get those forms to you. If ealier, go to them and ask for a copy of one of those forms.

A non-qualified scholarship is a scholarship/fellowship payment used for subsistence such as room, board, travel and personal expenses. All non-qualified scholarship/fellowship payments are potentially subject to income tax withholding and subject to reporting on IRS Form 1098-T or IRS Form 1042-S. Based on the University's policies and procedures, scholarship payments used for books, supplies, equipment and fees not approved by the Board must be paid as non-qualified scholarship. The student should always maintain the documentation necessary to classify the use of the scholarship/fellowship funds as qualified scholarships when filing a tax return.

If they withheld federal income tax they have to report that to you by end-January.

Where does the amount on line 7 in excess of taxable scholarship come from? It should be a W-2.

This is for 2011, sorry I didn't specify before. My 2012 taxes will look nearly identical, except I won't have to specify on line 7 any scholarship money. The SCH indication was for money that was not taxed (ie when I was a graduate trainee for 8 months of 2011) and the additional amount on line 7 is the total income I received from my stipend for the whole year. The school does not denote our wages on W2 forms...it is left up to the students to report taxable income (any stipend money not spent on books or school-related materials) to the IRS. Some students do not report the income they made as graduate trainees and some do not even report the *technically* earned income that they have had taxes withheld from. Others interpret their living expenses as a contingency for obtaining their degrees (after meeting with tax professionals) so they write the whole thing off as a school-related expense. I don't know what is right.