Where to Find Information About Education Tax Credits

The U.S. tax code is a maze of overlapping and seemingly contradictory rules. You've (hopefully) heard that you can recoup some of your expenses for higher education through tax credits and tax breaks, but how can you make sense of all this stuff?

Luckily, there are a few places you can head to for guidance - short of a professional tax preparer. While that always remains an option, most people can sort out their own taxes with a little bit of guidance.

The Official Source: IRS

One place you'll likely want to start is the IRS. The IRS website contains dozens of publications regarding the tax code, but if you know what you're looking for you can get to the information fairly quickly.

For example, the IRS publishes an entire publication about education tax credits and benefits. It's broken down by each specific tax credit or tax benefit - i.e. Hope Credit, Lifetime Learning Credit, or Tuition and Fees Deduction - with a table of contents that almost makes sense.

While this official documentation can be repetitive at times, it is the official source of information regarding education tax credits. You may want to look elsewhere for a plain English explanation, but you shouldn't completely avoid the IRS website.

An Unofficial Source: A Third Party Website

One of the great things about the Internet is that it's full of those plain English explanations. In most cases, hobbyists and small time content producers research, digest, and rewrite information like the tax code. A bit of searching around Google will help you find a useful source.

One example of unofficial information on educational tax benefits is Education Tax Credits. The site contains much of the same information as the official IRS documentation, but some of the legalese has been simplified and the unnecessary repetitiveness has been pared down. Along with a general explanation, you'll also find a calculator to estimate the value of each tax benefit and a series of quick questions about education tax credits.

Of course, when using third party information you should take care to find a reliable source. A site that provides references or citations to the original documentation (like the IRS site we previously looked at) is probably pretty reliable. That allows you to go back to the source and spot check anything that sounds a bit hazy.

An Electronic Preparer: TurboTax

A final option is to buy a copy of TurboTax and use it to prepare your taxes.

TurboTax does a good job of asking you questions and using your answers to accurately fill out your tax return. It's not 100% fool proof, but neither are human tax preparers. As an additional benefit, you'll be involved in the tax process, and you'll begin to learn how things work instead of letting someone else do all the work for you.

It may not be the quickest way to learn about a specific topic - but it'll get your taxes done and you'll be able to learn over time.

One way or another, you'd better get to work. April 15 is coming soon, and you've only got a month or two to get those taxes done!