The Federal Tax Credits Blog

Question: Federal Education Credits – Hope and Lifetime?

I was just doing my taxes and when I got to the education credits form (8863) it came out that I am not entitled to claim any credits. It’s because my income is so low I don’t pay any federal tax (my income was about $4500 last year). So I just wanna make sure this is accurate: if you don’t pay tax you aren’t entitled to the credit? because on my state return (NY) I also never pay tax but AM entitled to an education expense credit of about 200. So on federal they dont let you go into negative amounts on your tax payment i guess?

Answer: You are correct. The people who get that tax credit are getting a refund so to speak on money they have already paid in. If you haven’t paid any in, you don’t get any back.

For the record, those education credits are not very user friendly!
You can only take them the first and second year, you know, so the first time we filed for one, our student had just been in college the fall semester, so we only got credit for a half of a year. It’s done by the tax year, not the school year, so you can never get 2 years worth unless your first 2 years of college aren’t spread out over 3 tax years, which is almost never the case.

The Year America Lurched Left

In our first editorial after Barack Obama’s historic victory in November 2008, we acknowledged that “we were witnessing an event in which all Americans can take justifiable pride.”

The IRS, the Federal Reserve Bank & the Income Tax

Related posts

• Tax Credits For Students
• Students Tax Credits
• Student Tax Credits
• Tuition Tax Credit Stimulus Bill
• Tuition Tax Credit Stimulus
• Tax Credit Tuition Stimulus
• Tax Credit Education Stimulus