pjd@cwruecmp.UUCP (Dr. Funk) (04/03/84)
As a former graduate student, I was naturally interested in incoming averaging. There was some local debate about fellowships/scholarships versus assistantships (e.g., one kind of money you work for, the other you don't.) Since the danged IRS publications only address fellowships (even though more people are probably supported as TA's and RA's) we called up the local (Cleveland) office. Now the party (and bottom) line. The "intent of the law" is clear. The IRS does not want students to income average. If your assistantship income has been excluded in previous tax years, it cannot be used to satisfy the support requirement. Note that this argument depends upon an interpretation of "intent" and you should exercise caution. (We are not going to income average after this conversation with the local office.) One other note. If you want to get by the "flak catcher" who answers the IRS telephone and wants to send you publications and can't answer specific questions, ask for the "Technical Referral" department (assuming all IRS offices are organized in the same manner.) These folks seem to know how to find answers in the tax codes, guides and court records. I suspect they answer internal questions, so I'd give them a fairly high confidence factor as opposed to your basic seasonal employee. paul drongowski decvax!cwruecmp!pjd case western reserve university pjd.Case@Rand-Relay
edwards@felix.UUCP (04/19/84)
The more this topic gets discussed, the more I get confused.
The latest proposed truth is that you can't count your
fellowship toward your support, for which you must provide
at least half. Well, for two years, my SOLE income was
my fellowship. This means if you exclude my fellowship,
exactly $0 dollars went to my support, of which I provided
$0. Does that mean I paid half?
I've been income averaging for the past two years and intend
to continue until the IRS tells me I can't. I would have
a hard time believing they would have a legitimate case to
tell me to stop; of course that doesn't mean they wouldn't.
Dave Edwards
FileNet Corp.
{decvax,ucbvax}!trwrb!felix!edwards