(May 6, 2016) In March, the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) highlighted changes to tuition reporting on the IRS 1098-T form. In essence, the budget deal Congress passed at the very end of 2015 included a provision eliminating the most popular of the two options by which institutions could report individuals’ tuition payments for tax purposes via the 1098-T. The provision also stipulated that the change was to take effect for the 2016 tax year. Unfortunately for a large number of colleges and universities, their enterprise systems lacked the ability to track and report tuition payments on the 1098-T in the newly required manner, which would make providing the necessary 2016 1098-T forms to students and families by January 2017 very difficult if not impossible.
NACUBO, with broad support from across the higher education community, including EDUCAUSE, asked the IRS to delay implementation of the new reporting requirement for one year so that institutions and enterprise system providers would have time to adjust. Earlier this week, NACUBO reported that the IRS had agreed to the community’s request for a one-year delay:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced that it will not penalize institutions for reporting the aggregate amount billed for qualified tuition and related expenses (Box 2) on 2016 Form 1098-T instead of the aggregate amount of payments received (Box 1) as required by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 (PATH Act), enacted late last year.
EDUCAUSE appreciates the leadership and hard work of our colleagues at NACUBO in securing this needed flexibility for our collective members, and we congratulate them for a job well done! We were happy to lend our support to the cause.
Jarret Cummings is director of policy and external relations at EDUCAUSE.