Tax Question Education Expenses for Dependent (deduction, divorced, tax return, fees)

[marykate1]

My brother is my dependent and he lives with me! He goes to university and pay international tuition fees. Since, he has to pay international tuition our whole family contributes small amounts to make up for his fees. Now it is tax time and my family members are asking me to claim all his fees. I have only contributed a small amount like $1000. How should I go about claiming tax deductions on the education expenses for my brother which was contributed by the whole family and not only me!

[Briolat21]

First - you should always check with a tax professional.

I am not a tax professional - so this is merely hearsay/advice. I believe that if he is truly your dependent, you can claim any fees (that are legally deductible) on him as long as your other family members do not. Anotherwords the total amount of those fees can be claimed once, not once by you, and once by your other family members - but once total. So if you are the only one who claims them - you should be fine.

This comes up a lot with divorced couples claiming deductions for children with joint custody. The father will claim the full amount, and the mother will also claim the full amount - which is tax fraud. In those cases, the divorced parents should split the full amount proportionally and claim the fraction.

If you want to split your brother's fees with the other family members - you can do that. But they probably want you to claim it because maybe it will give you the greatest tax benefit.

Good luck! If your tax returns are tricky this year I'd go to a local tax preparer (even H&R Block).