The 1098-T form reports information on what you paid in tuition expenses at a college or university. All colleges and universities are required by the Internal Revenue Service to provide you with this information if you meet certain criteria.

By IRS regulations, BMCC does not have to file Form 1098-T or furnish a statement for:

• Courses for which no academic credit is offered, even if the student is otherwise enrolled in a degree program;
• Nonresident alien students, unless requested by the student;
• Students whose qualified tuition and related expenses are entirely waived or paid entirely with scholarships; and
• Students for whom you do not maintain a separate financial account and whose qualified tuition and related expenses are covered by a formal billing arrangement between an institution and the student’s employer or a governmental entity, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Department of Defense.

We are only required to send out 1098-T forms to students who had “eligible educational expenses and payments” that were greater than their financial assistance for the calendar year in question. 

• What that means is that we take all transactions that occurred between January 1^st and December 31^st and add them up.  If the financial assistance you accrued (any free money: scholarships, Pell grants, other grants, etc.) for the calendar year is greater than your “eligible educational expenses” (i.e. tuition, fees, lab fees, etc.), and the payments you made against these expenses, then you are NOT eligible to receive a 1098-T and one cannot be printed for you.  In general, this means you would have had to make payments directly to your student account during the year to be eligible to receive a 1098-T.
• The expenses, payments and financial assistance that we include are not tied to any specific term – what gets included in the calculation is ANY transaction that happened between January 1^st and December 31^st, regardless of the associated term.

The 1098-T form provides the details that can help you (or your parents/guardians) claim a tax credit for the tuition expense for higher education. A tax credit is different from a deduction. A deduction reduces the amount of income you have to pay tax on; a credit reduces the final amount of income tax you need to pay. (Source: Internal Revenue Service at http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch03.html#d0e3766; retrieved April 8, 2013.)