Oh, thanks so much for weighing in, @Mom2aphysicsgeek! So we’re NOT the only ones on the planet who filed/will file IAW the stupid letter of the law? I’m so glad! Hahaha. Misery loves company! 
It’s painful, isn’t it?
I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’ll help my son with his tax bill. For now, it has been paid out of my account. He’ll have to pay some portion of that back to me. He typically pays all of his own taxes out of his excess scholarships, like your son, but this year, his bill was so ridiculously high because my tax rate was so ridiculously high, because of some actions my employer took while emerging from bankruptcy. It hardly seems fair to have him pay the entire thing out of scholarships.
Yes, I think that’s the way to go for next year. If your son makes enough money to pay for more than 50% of his rent and food, then you can go the way Barfly went. I don’t know that living at home or not counts for much. As a student, I think our kids technically “live at home” IAW IRS regulations. Education is a temporary absence. But the part about not giving him any money and having him pay more than half his own way with his W-2 earnings should do the trick!
In hindsight, it would have been far cheaper for my son to pay for his own cell phone bill, car insurance, and clothes, than to pay his own tax bill. But still, it seems to me that, technically, in order to avoid paying his taxes at my rates, he would have had to pay for those things with W-2 wages, not taxable scholarship amounts. So, I think my family was stuck with what we got, unless we insist on looking at what the IRS surely must have fairly “intended” versus what the IRS wrote. How annoying.
Thanks again for chiming in!