I've been trying (awkwardly) to ask this question over in misc.legal.moderated but I think I have finally figured out what I'm trying to ask, so let me try here. Specific: if a person is co-borrower on a student loan used for qualified tuition, can that person be said to have paid that expense for the purpose of education-related benefits? For example, parent co-signs with dependent student on the loan. What about a guarantor on the loan? General: to whom do the deductible expenses belong, when paid for with the proceeds of a loan where there are two or more borrowers? Is it an election the borrowers can make, or does it depend on who makes what percent of annual interest and principal payments due? If the latter, does it depend on who paid interest and who paid principal? What if some of the monthly loan payments are themselves made with proceeds from the loan? And lastly, does a different answer apply if one of the parties to the loan is a guarantor instead of a co-borrower? If so, at what point does the status of a guarantor change if in fact he starts making payments on the loan, either voluntary or as a result of legal action by the creditor. For example, if a parent and a child (under 24, full-time student, lives at home more than half the year) co-sign a loan, and the proceeds are used to pay for more than half of the child's support that year, is the child a dependent?
In order to get the deduction, it has to be your obligation & you have to pay the interest. Being a guarantor or cosignor doesn't make it your obligation, unless the primary obligor defaults. ___________________________________
A summary that you suggest probably would be applicable to you (but which, as a summary, therefore leaves out some variations of) the basic definition for most federal income tax related purposes of a parent's "child" who is a "dependent" is one's biological or adopted child who resides with the parent for more than half of the relevant year (re. which absence to attend school is still ordinarily deemed as living at home) who is younger than 19 at the end of the relevant year unless s/he is a not permanently disabled student at the end of the year if under age 24 providing, too, that the child does not provide more than half his or her own support during the year. You still do not say to whom the proceeds of the loan in question were paid and, insofar as your question concerns student loan issues including deductibility, see further comment below.
. . . you do not say here whether here use "a person" to refer in general to a minor or adult who not the a parent with whom the student in question does not live at least one-half the year (even if part of that time away from home at school) and who does not provide at least one half that student's yearly financial support . . .
This remains a meaningless question because you still do not say that there have been any repayments (by anyone) of interest or principal or otherwise associated with the loan in question.
Assuming that the expense is of a sort that would be deductible to that person if that person incurred such expense, ordinarily the person who incurred and paid that expense.
Here, too, you continue at once to pose your question confusingly and also to confuse yourself mostly (here) do not make clear whether you're referring to an "election" not predicated on a sum the would-be "elect[or]" has paid or has not paid -- but, again, insofar as you query appears to refer to interest and related expenses for education related loans, see further comment below.
Ordinarily (as a general matter), the "it" to which you appear here to refer will depend on who made the payment in question (And/but: Yes - I presume that what you think you are also trying to ask here and elsewhere in your posting, as apparently in your other related ones, in effect, concerns, as if you believe this can be reliably glossed as a general matter, under what if any circumstances a person who is contractually obliged to repay a loan because that person is a joint and several co-signor or a guarantor of payment or a guarantor of collection of the loan in question may deduct from his or her federal income taxes interest or related expenses associated with that loan. It is just that, as a _general_ matter, you probably would be better advised now that you make at least this element of your concern clearer than you did in the past to focus on the tax effects of a loan for educational purposes of one's child.)
Generally speaking, money is fungible, if the relevant party (or parties) treat it as that. However, insofar as what now appears to be your actual concern, you still have not said to what if any extent it has been the student who made monthly loan payments from the proceeds to the student of the loan in question compared with or the parent who made monthly loan payment from the proceeds to the parent of the loan in question.
If an individual has guaranteed repayment or the collection of a loan to another, that person's status as such guarantor ordinarily does not "change" (from that of a "guarantor") merely because it has been that person, not the principal borrower, who makes the agreed payments of principal/interest. Relatedly (and essentially by definition), a person who is identified as a loan's "co-obligor" perhaps especially if (as you appear to imply is so for the loan have in mind) "jointly and severally" with the person who, for mutual convenience, might be thought of (and who also in/by the note or other loan agreement in question is explicitly designated as?) the principal borrower, also will not have such co-obligor's "status [as such] change" if s/he makes payments towards the satisfaction of the loan. The "status" or not of one as guarantor of payment or of collection or as joint and several co-borrower is determined from what the note or other loan document in question defines that status to be. HOWEVER (and as suggested earlier), if, as you now (if more than a little belatedly) appear to be saying, your actual concern and query concerns less the variations of "liability" of differing kinds of "co-signer" and "co-obligor" and "guarantor" as a general matter or who, ordinarily as a general matter, "owns" the proceeds of a loan made to more than one person and, instead (or, at least, primarily) the tax deductibility or not of a parent's direct and indirect financial contributions to his or her child's educational expenses, read IRS publication 970 ("Tax Benefits for Education") and Tax Topic 456 ("Student Loan Interest Deduction") and, if need be, the full text of and the related IRS regulations on which these publications are based _and_, if it is not too late to do so, discuss with the lender(s), who presumably will be expert about these matters, how to structure a loan for a student's education in a manner that, in light of the respective parties' income, etc., is most likely to be tax beneficial. But your mode of posing the questions for which you've opted in this and related newsgroups suggest that you are not likely to be aided by (even if arguably correct) answers to the so far too generalized/open-ended questions you've been posting.
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