<p>Turbotax should prompt you for the scholarship amount and the tuition billed. As long as the tuition is more than the scholarship it should not add anything to the income for line 7.</p>
<p>I can never fully configure this out:</p>
<p>According to this link: [FinAid</a> | Scholarships | Taxability of Scholarships](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Taxability of Scholarships - Finaid)
there are actually two kinds of scholarship/fellowship (the name itself, scholarship or fellowship, does not matter. What matters is whether it is a payment for services to the institute.)</p>
<p>My point is that, if the scholarship is categorized by the school and IRS as a payment for services, it may need to be shown up as the income for line 7, just as other earned income. (except that there may be no requirement to pay the employment tax (FICA) using Schedule SE.) In later sections of 1040, the edication deduction or American Opportunity (if the first 4 college year) or the lifetime opportunity edication credit is used to eliminate or reduce the tax liability.</p>
<p>Not Payment for Services </p>
<p>The scholarship or fellowship must NOT, however, be awarded in compensation for teaching and research services performed by the student. The portion of the award that represents payment for services is taxable. For example, a teaching assistantship or research assistantship is not necessarily exempt. If you are required to teach a class in exchange for your tuition waiver and stipend, it may be the case that the award is fully taxable. In such cases, for the tuition waiver portion of a TAship or RAship to be exempt, the rest of the stipend must represent fair compensation for the services rendered. Stipends paid for living expenses are, of course, always taxable. If the tuition waiver is exempt, then only the stipend portion of your award will be reported to you (and the IRS) as income on your W2 form. </p>
<p>Some universities or departments work around the “payment for services” restriction by making teaching duties part of the educational program. For example, one department provides every graduate student in the department with a full fellowship, and requires each graduate student to TA two classes before they can graduate. Since the teaching and research duties are uniform for all students and are construed as educational requirements – more for the benefit of the student than the university – these duties do not represent payment for services. They are graduation requirements and not conditions for receiving the grant. These duties are an essential part of the students’ graduate education; TAships provide the student with teaching experience necessary for their future careers as faculty, and RAships provide the student with the opportunity to conduct doctoral research and to work on their dissertation. After all, a PhD is a research degree, so it makes sense to require research experience as part of the degree program. </p>
<p>[The IRS recently started challenging the validity of such arrangements. According to the May 5, 1995, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the IRS has asked the University of Wisconsin at Madison for $81 million in back taxes, claiming that the work performed by research assistants is not part of their graduate education and hence subject to taxation like any other job. Note that the university was careful to distinguish between research assistantships intended to further the student’s education and research assistantships aimed at assisting faculty with their own research. Federal income tax and Social Security tax was withheld from the latter but not the former. The university will be fighting the charges in US Tax Court.]</p>
<p>^ It is really stupid of me for not figuring out this earlier: DS’s income is below the sum of the standard deduction ($5950) and the personal exemption ($3800). He did not have any tax withheld last year. So, there is no need to file the tax return at all.</p>
<p>I hear you folks on this site are pretty savvy when it comes to medical school issues and my son has a major issue that perhaps you can give me feedback on.</p>
<p>He’s doing his clinical rotations and is supposed to hand in 6 sco’s before taking a shelf test. On his last rotation, he forgot to have all 6 filled out and filled out the 6th one himself, not signing it. He went and took the test. He realized his mistake and went to tell the doctor at his school who collects these what happened. Apparently during his test, during which no cell phones are allowed, the doctor sent him an email asking who filled out that sco. My son hadn’t seen it when he went to talk to the doctor. The school just had a hearing about this and has suspended him from school for the rest of the semester, and he may have to repeat this year for this ethics violation. It will also be put on his record. My son was asked if he was going to appeal it. One of the faculty at the school, suggested he get an attorney which we did who has dealt successfully with a case like this at the school last year. The lawyer told my son to appeal it and he submitted the appeal within the 1 week allowed. The lawyer suggested he get letters of recommendation attesting to his character etc. Needless to say, my son is very distraught and has never wanted to be anything other than a doctor since he was 14. Do you have any other suggestions and what do you think about this case. From the lawyer’s perspective, it appears to be overly harsh. I should point out that the sco has nothing about the condition of any patients but only how my son did during the rotation.</p>
<p>One of D1’s classmates ran into similiar issue. The individual went out of town for the weekend and got snowed in. (State police shut down the highways with barricades and were turning motorist back. No way the individual could have gotten back to town.) There was a unit final Monday morning. The individual attempted to call the Dean of Students, was unable to reach her, left a message and sent her email explaining the situation, but hadn’t received a reply by the time the exam was supposed to begin.</p>
<p>The individual discovered s/he was able to log into the computer-based exam from the location away from campus–which wasn’t supposed to be possible since the software is supposed to lock out any computer access except from the on-campus exam room. Assuming the Dean had arranged an exception, the individual took the exam. Upon reviewing the computer access codes, the off-campus access was discovered and the individual was cited for an ethics violation for taking the exam from an unauthorized off-campus site. </p>
<p>There was a hearing. The individual was found guilty, failed the unit and was told s/he had to repeat MS1. It will remain on the individual’s record forever. S/he was advised not to appeal since s/he had signed a document upon enrolling saying s/he understood that testing may only be done at the authorized test site, and had knowingly violated the exam policy. The hearing officers decided that a software glitch was NOT a sufficient justification for a policy violation.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that there’s much your son can do at this point.</p>
<p>In med school, there are a ton of very specific and seemingly arbitrary rules. Most of them have zip to do with patient welfare.</p>
<p>And given D1’s classmate’s experience, I would not say this punishment is overly harsh.</p>
<p>ethics–</p>
<p>no advice, just lots of sympathy. it sounds like your son was not trying to be malicious and just made a mistake–hopefully his character references will help! good luck to you both, and i hope someone can chime in with more information for you.</p>
<p>
We may say the same about military:
In military, there are a ton of very specific and seemingly arbitrary rules.</p>
<p>There are several factors weighing in on this. First off, based on the school rules, certain procedures were supposed to be followed including notifying him what was going on before he was called into a hearing and allowing him to have an advocate present. These plus some other stuff which I don’t recall were not followed and is part of the basis of the attorney’s case. My son was called into a meeting of 8 people without having a clue as to what was going on. None of these people knew my son. Needless to say at this stage, some of the faculty who do know him are somewhat nervous about going against several deans etc. So now he is getting references etc. The sco’s are somewhat a formality and is nothing like cheating with an exam. The attorney is astonished that the school is doing this but said that he knows some of the people who were present and that they are "di**heads. I think the school is astonished that my son is appealing the decision.</p>
<p>To be clear, the classmate did not cheat, merely took the exam from a location other than on campus. IOW, failed to follow procedure and was disciplined for that.</p>
<p>An exam vs some paperwork that was left unsigned is still quite different and with respect to the exam, it was clearly spelled out what the rules were.</p>
<p>Well, my D is changing course pretty dramatically. Interested in IM now and a specialty in Gastroenterology. Will be speaking to some GI docs and her med school mentor this week to see if her plan makes any sense, much less good sense. Has been leaning this way for about 6 weeks so…that’s something.</p>
<p>so will she still take a year off if shes chooses that route?</p>
<p>How coincidental!</p>
<p>D1 has mentioned gastro as her favorite IM specialty and has it on her short list of things she’s interested in…</p>
<p>Yeah. Although she mentioned the possibility of NOT taking the research year on one occasion, but the application stress will be lessened greatly by having the research year and an opportunity to set up a more compelling residency app by making connections and taking electives.</p>
<p>More costly? Yes. Necessary? Probably not.</p>
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</p>
<p>You never specified what an “sco” is but from the implication in your first post that your son was not supposed to be filling them out, my assumption is that they are a type of evaluation that are supposed to be filled out by a faculty member. If so, that is a pretty serious mistake, akin to cheating on an exam.
That being said, you will not likely find any good advice about this on the internet, and I can’t imagine your son would thank you for posting his situation on a public forum.</p>
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</p>
<p>While many rules may not be directly about patient care or safety, they do have to do with the professionalism that is required of a physician. Just because an issue isn’t directly cheating on a test does not mean it is not a professionalism issue. The school has a fiduciary duty to graduate physicians who are not only knowledgeable, but professional, etc.</p>
<p>I have no idea what a SCO is. But…whenever you are dealing with a bureacracy…an effective strategy to consider is to use their rules against them. His attorney will know that. Good luck. Not taking sides but it sounds like a horrible position for your son to be in. </p>
<p>There is a lesson in these two stories for all of us.</p>
<p>As to GI fellowship…I just looked at sdn. Great news! It’s “uber-competitive”,too. Lovely. Just lovely.</p>
<p>Tell me again, why do y’all do this?</p>
<p>I agree that there is a lesson in these two stories for all of us. My gut feeling is that a student who was graduated from a private college especially needs to pay more attention to the bureacratic rules. The smaller the school is, usually less bureacracies it is. (e.g., a dean with the help of frocos, at private college, may take the students a little bit too well. IMHO. As such, the students there may have less experiences in dealing with this kind of bureacratic stuff, unlike those in a much larger public school. But this may be just my bias.)</p>
<p>Regarding specialies, DS only mentioned IM in general. We do not know the specialty he might be interested in. He has had a track record of throwing a curve ball at us though. (e.g., wondering whether he should take LSAT instead of MCAT at the last minute.)</p>
<p>To curm and wowmom–girl GI docs make BANK.</p>
<p>We have one very hilarious and pretty un-PC lecturer. He’s an old dude and as far as I can tell, students just love him. His specialty is infectious disease, but he works closely with some of our GI lecturers. The ID guy likes to say that the GI guys “spend all day lookin up a-holes, pullin out thousand dolla bills!”</p>
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</p>
<p>Sounds like investment banking.</p>
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<p>Curm, do urge Mudgette to bear in mind that guidelines may be evolving away from screening colonoscopies. That changes the revenue model for GI considerably.</p>