How to Handle Tax Season: Advice for College Students and Parents.

When college students and their parents are getting ready to do their taxes, they need to be very careful and check everything before sending their tax forms. It's important for students to mark if they are a dependent on their taxes, or it could cause big problems that are hard to fix. Tax experts say it's important for college students to know if their parents can claim them as dependents. Not claiming a dependent doesn't automatically make a student independent.

There are two big tax credits for education costs. The American opportunity credit helps with costs for the first four years of college, and the lifetime learning credit can help with costs for any type of higher education. Students and parents need to know they can't use both credits for the same student in the same year. But if there's more than one student in the family, they can use the credits for each one, just not at the same time.

College students often have many jobs and might need to get some tax forms online instead of in the mail. Make sure all forms are collected from jobs and the college before filing taxes. If a student is paying for a lot of their own costs and wants to get in-state tuition in a different state than their parents, they should talk to the college financial aid office.

Sometimes, a student still needs to file their own tax return, even if their parents claim them as a dependent. Students and parents should look into the rules about when a student needs to file based on how much money they made. Money taken out of a 529 college savings account doesn't get taxed, and it can be used for more than just tuition. But you can only use it for certain costs if you want the tax benefits.

To learn more about taxes during tax season, there's a lot of information available online. It's good for students and parents to read up on the rules to make sure they are doing their taxes correctly. Checking all the rules and making sure to have all the right documents is key to not messing up on your taxes. It's worth taking the time to get it right.