Tax refund help on the student stuff?

Question

I am married and going to college, and my wife is also going to college. My question is on the tax rebates that you get from being a student. I know that you get like $2000 refund from being a student, but my tax guy said that because we are married that we can only get the $2000 from one of us, instead of the full $4000 that we would have got if we were supposed to be single. Is that true? Is there a way to get my full refund? I feel like i keep getting screwed (of course) everywhere I turn because me any my wife are trying to survive and move up in the world (and be smart), but we can't ever get help with school. We barely made 30,000 together last year so we no longer get grants (but seperate we would have got a lot!), and we only get half of our rebate. We are waiting to have kids after school, so we also get screwed because of that, even though it is the smart decision to wait because of time and financial reasons. Please help.

Answer 1

The Education Credits are Non Refundable Credits, they reduce the amount of your tax liability, which in turn can increase the amount of your refund, based on your liability and the amount of Federal Taxes withheld from your wages. If you meet all of the other qualifications to claim the credit, both you and your spouse may be able to claim the credit.
See Publication 970 for additional information
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/index.html

Answer 2

There isn't a $2000 refund for being a student. The amount of education credits depends on the amount of eligible expenses (tuition and fees), and whether either of you is eligible for the Hope credit or the Lifetime Learning credit - the Hope credit is usually more, but also has more restrictions.

You can take credits for both of your expenses, so either your tax guy is wrong or you misunderstood what he said. The education credits can only reduce whatever tax you owe, so if you owe less tax than your calculated credits, it would take your tax to zero, but they wouldn't send you the difference. This by the way is the same rule whether you're married or single. With an income of around $30,000, your total tax would only be about $1300, so that's the most you could get for an education credit (taking your tax to zero). If your tax is zero, you would get anything refunded that you had withheld for federal income tax.

Answer 3

No the tax credit is per person going to school, not per family, another question is are you both working? And there is the one time learning credit sorry cannot think of the name, use turbo tax in the future worked great for me. If you are supporting your child and claiming on taxes you can also claim that. Know for a fact, because in order to get grants could not claim my daughter cost me thousands