Can You Deduct Educational Travel for Dependent Students?
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) limits travel expense deductions for your dependent student to a small number of circumstances. These rules may allow you to deduct travel expenses if they are fees for a foreign-study program, but not the actual cost of traveling abroad to study in a foreign country. If your child is employed while at school, this may also limit the number of deductions you can claim for educational expenses.
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Travel as Education
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The IRS does not allow you to deduct education-related travel expenses -- for a dependent child or anyone else -- when the travel experience itself is considered to be the education. For example, you cannot take a deduction for a student traveling to France to improve skills as part of a foreign-language degree. The IRS does not allow these deductions for travel because there would be no way to separate the activities performed solely for educational value and those performed solely for pleasure or personal gain.
Required Travel Expenses
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You may be able to deduct some travel-related expenses for a dependent child as long as the travel is related to a required activity for the student's degree program or course of study. For example, travel fees to study and perform tests at an off-campus laboratory may be deductible using the education-related expenses deduction. According to IRS Publication 970, costs for education-related travel outside of the United States do not usually net you a deduction regardless of how necessary that travel may be for the student's graduation.
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Work-to-School Travel
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If your support for your dependent student includes paying for transportation costs from the student's job or internship directly to the school site, you may use the travel costs as an education-related expense. The student must not provide more than 50 percent of her own support for you to continue claiming her as a dependent on your federal tax return. If the job pays too well you'll lose out on many tax deductions.
Business-Related Expenses
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The IRS does not allow a double benefit for deductions on your federal tax return. You only get to claim each tax deduction once regardless of the circumstances. If you already roll your dependent student's travel expenses into your own business-related expenses, you can no longer claim your child's travel as an education-related expense. For example, driving your dependent child to college while also in the course of business travel affords you a business-related deduction only. This also applies to any expenses reimbursed with a tax-free scholarship, grant or employer-provided educational assistance.
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