The IRS allows qualifying education expenses to be applied to one of the following education benefits:

• American opportunity credit,
• lifetime learning credit, or
• tuition and fees deduction.

To enter your education expenses and qualifications:

1. From within your TaxAct return (Online or Desktop), click Federal. On smaller devices, click in the upper left-hand corner, then select Federal.
2. Click Education in the Federal Quick Q&A Topics menu to expand the category and then click Student Worksheet (tuition, scholarships)
3. Click +Add Student Information
4. The program will proceed with the interview questions for you to enter or review the appropriate information. If the student received a Form 1098-T, click Yes under the "Did [student] receive Form 1098-T from this school for 2019?" heading on the screen titled Student Information - Educational Institution to enter that information.

TaxAct will generally determine which education benefit is most advantageous for you based on the data entered on your return (such as income, filing status, amount of qualified expenses, etc).

You can review or modify the tax treatment of the education expenses to see how the refund or amount owed may change between the American opportunity credit, lifetime learning credit, or tuition and fees deduction.

1. Click Federal. On smaller devices, click in the upper left-hand corner, then select Federal.
2. Click Education to expand the category and then click Education credit summary
3. Select Click here to change the selected education benefit

Once you have reviewed how each of the education credits or deduction affects your return, you may want to select Auto again to return to the education benefit automatically selected by TaxAct.

See IRS Publication 970 Tax Benefits for Education for more information.