<p>Ok, so I have a scholarship from my college that pays full room and board for me, as well as my campus fees. I also receive Bright Flight and an Access Grant, as well as full Pell (typically). My scholarship takes most of those grants and uses them first before applying my scholarship, then takes the excess money from the scholarship and keeps most of it, but this year I got a $1,800 return, a lot of which was spent on books (my Spanish book was $210 alone!). I am a dependent with no income of my own. Do I need to file taxes? I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, and I don't want to get in trouble later because I was supposed to file taxes and I didn't. Please help.</p>
<p>You should have received a 1098T which reports the amount of qualified education expenses and the total amount of your scholarships and grants. Add the cost of your books (if you have receipts) to the amount of qualified expenses. Any amount of money that you received but did not spend on qualified expenses is reportable (and taxable) income. Room and board are NOT qualified expenses, so the money that was used for that is taxable.</p>
<p>For more information, go over to the financial aid threads.</p>
<p>Find out how you can treat the money. For example, if you can say that the scholarship paid for what was left over for tuition, fees and books after the Bright Futures, and that you used your Pell money for housing, meals, etc. then the scholarship money would not be taxable.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if for some reason the scholarship money is specifically for housing and meals and can only be spent on that, then it almost certainly is taxable.</p>