The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I am currently filing through TurboTax and am pretty shocked at how much they are saying my taxes are going to cost. Anyone else use TurboTax to file their 1099-MISC? If so, anyone have any tips?

It also asks "Did you perform any service to earn the money paid to you?"

Not sure whether to check yes or no... I was a 2017 recipient, so I haven't worked the internship yet, and I'm not sure if going to school counts...

HOrobOD wrote:It also asks "Did you perform any service to earn the money paid to you?"

If you check yes, this will trigger self employment taxes. Generally the consensus has been that this should be no. However, if no, then it should be reported as a taxable scholarship, this may trigger the "kiddie tax" if you are a full time student through age 23, since it may be tough to qualify as an independent under the IRS support rules.

There are multiple threads regarding reporting the stipend.

Not using TurboTax so not sure exactly of the nuances of entering it in their interview.

This scholarship is not in exchange for work done...says it all over the place. Check on some of the other threads for links to turbo tax help. I posted it in at least two.

As for Kiddie tax, I still don't understand how you're filing out the forms, I'm under 23 with no other income and I'm able to claim independence/not subject to kiddie tax without doing anything special.

kbl2017 wrote: As for Kiddie tax, I still don't understand how you're filing out the forms, I'm under 23 with no other income and I'm able to claim independence/not subject to kiddie tax without doing anything special.

If you claim to be independent then the software won't subject you to the kiddie tax, however, one reading of the IRS rules is that you can't count taxable scholarship money towards your support (no one gets credit for it for the support calculation) so by the IRS worksheet definition, you are paying nothing towards your support unless you have some other earned income or savings (actually a bit more complicated than that) while your parent(s) have to claim a fraction of the entire household expenses towards your support whether you are actually living at home or eating the food and so are supplying significant support. See the earlier kiddie tax thread for references.