<p>mabel -
I’m looking up a few things (about income limit for AOC, etc).<br>
In the meantime - did you or your daughter take out any loans to pay for college costs - either packaged as part of her financial aid, or on your own (if the child is claimed as your dependent for taxes, amounts borrowed by the child count as being borrowed and paid by you for purposes of the AOC.)</p>
<p>MomCat2- D is dependent on our taxes, no loans, yet!</p>
<p>MomCat2- The tax software states the AOC is partially available up to $180,000. If I only use the $625 for the course materials “we paid” and leave out any of the monies paid for tuition, it tells me that the AOC is worth $207.</p>
<p>From the original post: "Is there any benefit to withdrawing funds from a 529 and having them sent directly to a school over getting a check and forwarding it on? "</p>
<p>While there shouldn’t be, I will point out the following. In 2008, I had the 529 send the funds directly to the school. No issues. In 2009, I had the money deposited in my account and I paid the college. I was recently sent a package from the IRS (something you never want to see in the mailbox, ha!) saying I owe taxes on the income portion of my 2009 529 withdrawal. I have sent supporting info to IRS and expect this to be resolved, but this is still a hassle. And to be sure, for 2011-2012, I’ll have the 529 send the money directly to the school. </p>
<p>FWIW, I’ve seen this same experience reported by others on these boards.</p>
<p>I have similar questions about the AOC and contributing to / paying from 529. Our income level makes us eligible for the AOC of $4000. I am planning on covering freshman year of around $25,000 out of 529/ESA. My state gives credits for 529 contributions. It seems to me that I could get the AOC and continue making 529 contributions and still get state credit without the “double dipping” penalty if I make sure that $4000 of the school payment DOESN’T COME FROM THE 529. Correct? This means paying $21,000 from 529/ESA and $4000 from our savings account. </p>
<p>Another issue is that is seems like getting a state tax credit is a double-edge sword. On the one hand it’s great to get a tax credit and pay less tax which would equal a bigger refund (possibly) but that would mean that we would lose 47% of it to the EFC. I guess 53% is better than nothing.</p>
<p>goru-- I’ve been wondering the same thing–which is better–sent to me or school? Now I’m leaning to school. Did you have the money sent in 2 lump sums to the school or did you use a monthly interest-free payment plan? I had been thinking I’d have the money sent to me incrementally and pay it via a monthly plan so as to keep as much as possible still invested to hopefully to continue earning dividends. Might be easier to just pay in the two lumps (?) Actually depends on where D goes (STILL HASN’T DECIDED). One of her schools doesn’t have a monthly payment plan.</p>
<p>You cant directly go from the 529 (at least my 529) to one of the tuition pay plans. I had 3 choices:</p>
<p>1) Direct to school
2) Direct to child
3) Direct to me. </p>
<p>I think choices 1 & 2 will lead to no issues with IRS. Frankly, choice 3 should as well. You’d think they could put together that our children are on our 1040 as dependents and figure it all out. But, no. </p>
<p>We did use the monthly plans last year. The only way for us to do it was to withdraw directly to me. Then I sent the money to the plans. Given the pathetic interest rates these days, my conclusion is that the benefit isn’t worth it. Especially given that I now have this IRS hassle hanging over me.</p>
<p>Yes, I have been weighing the benefits/hassle of doing just what you did–have the money sent to me and then paying it via the monthly plan and whether it makes sense given rates of return. Originally I thought I could pay the monthly bill with our credit card and thereby get points (which really add up and then I could cash them in to cover books etc.) but one of D’s possibilities doesn’t take credit cards and the other, as I mentioned, doesn’t have a payment plan. Reading about your experience, I’d say it’s not worth the hassle.</p>
<p>apparently there is a form that accountants possess (secret stuff lol) that they can submit with your tax forms if you have been paid by the 529 and you paid the bill yourselves (as in goru’s case)…if I can get a PDF of the form sent to me, I will try and post the # of the form here…</p>
<p>In the mean time, I cannot believe the difficulty of this process…it should not be this way…</p>
<p>we paid the school directly from the 529 plan and all is good for 2009/2010…now, daughter is moving off-campus next year(another kink in the ointment)…</p>
<p>how do you use funds from 529 for off-campus housing? and board? does one need to get an estimate from the college for estimated expenses for this?</p>
<p>Great question rodney- When I talked to the rep for our 529 account about all this stuff (being a newbie), she told me that all we had to do is keep receipts for everything we/D bought, for example: books, computer, etc as well as school bills. Didn’t even consider your situation as we are not there yet. But it seems to me that one would have to keep detailed receipts and records for apt. costs and food too if one’s child lives off campus. Of course this could get sticky (no pun intended) when talking about food bills as well as having a college student trying to keep track of this stuff!</p>
<p>mabel - got called away from the computer to deal with other stuff - I have a reply in progress to you and will get back to you later.</p>
<p>Colleges typically publish a COA for off-campus students. Just pay actual expenses as they’re incurred; as long as they’re on the list of qualified higher education expenses you should be fine.</p>
<p>My son lives off campus this year. I withdraw enough money from his 529 to pay 4-5 months of rent at a time and deposit that into his checking account. He keeps track of food/books/misc on a spreadsheet and we settle up every couple of months. We don’t keep receipts but the spreadsheet is pretty detailed if we’re ever audited.</p>
<p>
The amount of room and board that can be used as qualifying expenses for tax free 529 account distributions is limited to the amount for room and board included in the school’s COA.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>mabel - sorry for the long delay… I’ll show how you figure the taxable part of your 529 distribution and talk about figuring your AOC–</p>
<p>I’ll assume that you’re “Married Filing Jointly” - if not, say so.</p>
<p>You will need to look at Form 8863 <a href=“http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8863.pdf[/url]”>http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8863.pdf</a> and the instructions for that form <a href=“http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8863.pdf[/url]”>http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8863.pdf</a> Complete the “Credit Limit Worksheet” on p. 4 of the instructions. - unless something weird turns out here and you have tons of tax loopholes, I’ll assume that someone at your income level owes enough tax to be eligible for both the refundable and non-refundable part of the AOC.</p>
<p>Your situation is more complicated than ours was, since you’re in that region between $160K and $180K (line 38 on the 1040, or “adjusted gross income” is what matters here). The full amount of the AOC is $2500 - for 1040 line 38 (AGI) between $160K and $180K the amount you can claim decreases from $2500 at $160K to $0 at $180K. Form 8863 will show you how much of the credit you can claim. I ran the numbers for an AGI of $170K – it came out to $1250 - 500 refundable (listed on line 66 of the 1040) and $750 non-refundable (listed on line49 of 1040) (more number crunching shows that an AGI of $165K yields an AOC of $1875 - 40% of this refundable, 60% non-refundable)</p>
<p>Anyhoo, the amt you can claim of the AOC aside, $4000 of tuition+mandatory fees + required books/supplies is what counts as being “used” toward the AOC.
I will round to whole dollar amounts in the following discussion.</p>
<p>From my previous post, your “Amount A” is $34587 (tuition/fees/room/board/books). I’ll do this the way the IRS does their “example 2” on p. 55 of pub 970:
Total qualified educational expenses = $34587
Minus: Expenses taken into account in figuring AOC -4000
Equals: Adjusted qualified educational expenses (AQEE) $30587</p>
<p>The taxable part of the distribution is figured as follows -
1.$424.44 (earnings) X $30587 AQEE/(divided by)$33962 distribution = $382 (tax-free earnings)
2. $424 (earnings) - $382 (tax-free earnings) = $42 (taxable earnings)</p>
<p>This $42 goes on your DAUGHTER’S tax return (form 1040, line 21) as other income - I think you would list the type of income in the space for line 21 as “taxable part of QTP distrib’n” or something like that.<br>
I had thought that the <em>parents</em> would be taxed on this, but it’s good that it’s the child who pays - many students will be below the $5700 threshold for “single person who is claimed as a dependent on another’s return”, and students who DO owe income tax would probably be in only the 10% bracket (unless maybe if they have a lot if interest/dividends or other unearned income). </p>
<p>SOOO , at most, your daughter might have to pay $4.20 in additional tax, but she might not have to pay anything at all.</p>
<p>[on edit - since you said you came up with an AOC of $208 if you just counted the books expense, it seems like you should be able to get an AOC of around $828 if you use the full $4000 amount of expenses toward the credit - do form 8863 to be sure.]</p>
<p>MomCat2 </p>
<p>******** applause **********</p>
<p>upstatemom, I’ll try to answer some of your questions in your post #25 –</p>
<p>Yes, in order to avoid any “double-dipping” taxation you would need to pay $21K from the 529 and the other $4K from savings. BUT, as my calculations for mabel showed, the extra tax from double-dipping even $3400 can be pretty tiny (or even non-existent, depending on your child’s income), UNLESS you’ve had money in the 529 for a long time and the percent of a distribution that is “earnings” is substantial. It was a real eye-opener for me to read the details in Pub 970 and actually do some calculations – bottom line is that for people who have had funds in their 529 account for only a short time or whose funds took a nosedive with the stock market, it turns out that it can actually be <em>beneficial</em> from a tax standpoint to do the double-dipping thing.</p>
<p>In terms of the state income tax deduction, you can (and should) adjust your state withholding so that you owe the state a little bit at the end of the year or they owe you only a small refund because YES, the FAFSA EFC calculation will cause you to lose 47% of that refund the next year. 53% of a refund is still better than nothing though!</p>
<p>We saved $1100 in state income tax due to 529 contributions for 2010, and we made a teensy bit in earnings. The FAFSA calculations will make around $60 of state tax refund go bye-bye next year, but that still means that we’ll need to borrow about $1000 less. Yeah, there are some bookkeeping hassles, but the effective “hourly wage” for that bookkeeping is still pretty darn good! </p>
<p>FYI, you can still (up to April 18) make 529 contributions for 2010 IF you specify to the 529 plan adminstrator when you make the contribution that you want it to count as a contribution for the 2010 tax year rather than 2011. Check your plan’s website or call them for instructions to make sure that you’re doing this correctly.</p>
<p>Thanks for the applause, vballmom.
(why, yes, I am more than a bit of a numbers geek. :-)</p>
<p>MomCat2-WOW, I can’t believe you took the time to do all that work for a stranger! Your the best! I think a “standing ovation” is in order. Let me know where to send your “cut” of the extra $620 you saved us!</p>
<p>Thank You again.</p>
<p>WOW MomCat2!!! You are amazing, incredible! I am going to cut and paste your info into a file and save it on my computer.</p>
<p>Regarding contributions for 2010 now, we have already done our taxes so we wouldn’t be able to get a state credit. Would there be any other benefit to back contributing? It would only be a small amount, not enough to endanger going over the limit for 2011.</p>
<p>upstatemom - It would depend on how good of a deal your state gives you for 529 contributions to your state plan. It varies a lot from state to state - for some states, like, IIRC, CA it’s zip, for others the tax savings can be very substantial.</p>
<p>Some states also have a carry-forward provision where, if you contribute more than the maximum allowed for state income tax deductions in any one year, you can claim the excess in a <em>future</em> tax year (carry it forward) - for one state I looked up when another CCer was discussing their state’s 529 rules, you can carry forward for up to 11 future years! (no time to check right now - may have been MD or Delaware) </p>
<p>In our state, our marginal income tax rate is 5.5%. Couples married filing jointly can deduct up to $20K per year of 529 contributions, and there’s some sort of carry-forward provision for 5 (or is it 10?) years for excess contributions, which I just found out about recently.
A month or so back, in order to reach the $20K cap, I put an extra $2K in and had them designate it as being for 2010 - this saved us an extra $110 in state income tax. (yes, the FAFSA EFC will grab some of that next year, because it meant that we’ll get a little refund). For me, it was worth it - why pay more tax than you have to? I pay every bit of tax that we owe, but try to take every legitimate deduction that I can.</p>
<p>Most state tax returns are pretty simple - you could think about back contributing. It wouldn’t affect your Fed return (since contributions are made with after-tax dollars) so you’d only have to re-do the state return.</p>
<p>Now that I know about the carry-forward provision and that the tax penalty for double-dipping with the AOC would be miniscule for us, I will be trying to put as much money as possible in the 529s for the next few years.</p>
<p>A month or two back, someone posted a link which gave all of the states’ 529 tax rules - I’ll run off and try to find it…</p>