<p>So I'm a freshman in college right now, and I, along with my sibling, also in college, received a substantial amount of scholarships and grants for college. Our taxable scholarships, subtracted from our total tuition costs, come up to around 23k, which is over half of my parents total income. </p>
<p>Should both my sibling and I file out own separate taxes, so the total income of my parents will not be so high (so we can perhaps get more aid for the following year than if we were to have a "higher" income?)</p>
<p>Both my sibling and I are not working, and our "income" would just be the taxable scholarships. </p>
<p>Your scholarship income will NOT be added to your parents’ incomes no matter how you file your taxes. If YOU the student have taxable scholarship income, YOU are required to file taxes on that income. It is YOUR income, not your parents’ income.</p>
<p>Right, but for previous years, my sibling just wrote down his total scholarship amount for line 7 for 1040A as “SCH” $xxxx, and then the amount that was taxable was added onto the total for line 7. That total was my parents income plus his taxable scholarship, because they put him down as a dependent. </p>
<p>But this year, we don’t know if it will be better to just file our own taxes instead of adding the scholarship amount like that.</p>
<p>It looks like your family did it wrong in earlier years. It doesn’t matter that your brother was/is a dependent. His scholarship shouldn’t have been listed on your parents’ tax return. That line would be for your parents to list any scholarships THEY rec’d. Your parents didn’t receive any scholarships.</p>
<p>Dependents don’t list income on their parents’ 1040’s.</p>
<p>What you did previously was wrong, and you need to file an amended return for your parents for last year, and your brother needs to file his own tax return. The IRS hasn’t notified you yet, but it often takes them a year or more to catch these things. Your parents will get a refund, and your brother will owe taxes for 2011 - unfortunately he will also owe penalties and interest on whatever is due, but that may be balanced by the fact that he his taxes will be lower.</p>
<p>This year, your parents still file with you as dependents. They will report only income that is reported to them under their social security numbers. You and your brother will each file your own tax returns, reporting any taxable scholarships as well as any earned income.</p>
<p>There are very specific situations where parents claim income reported to their children, but that is for investment income, not scholarships.</p>
<p>Since state taxes are often based on federal taxes, you may need to find amended forms for your state as well.</p>
<p>If there is a penalty that is extremely burdensome, sometimes a well written apologetic letter explaining why you made the mistake that you did can get you off the hook. Not always, but sometimes.</p>
<p>Section 1 of IRS Pub 970 has the information on taxable scholarships(the 2012 pub isn’t out yet but won’t differ much if at all from the 2011 pub):</p>
<p>Everywhere in Section 1 where it uses the words ‘you’ or ‘your’ it is referring to you and your sibling’s income and return, not to your parents.</p>
<p>If your parents owed extra taxes because of the inclusion of your siblings taxable scholarship on their 2011 return, they should get some money back after filing the 1040x.</p>