TurboTax / Tax Calculators & Tips / All Tax Guides / IRS Tax Forms / What is a 1098-E: Student Loan Interest

What is a 1098-E: Student Loan Interest

Updated for Tax Year 2014



What Form 1098-E tells you

Your lenders are required to send you Form 1098-E only if you paid at least $600 in interest during the year. If you have several student loans with the same lender, the financial institution applies the $600 threshold amount to the total interest paid on all of your loans; you may get a separate Form 1098-E for each loan, though. The amount you see in box 1 reflects your total interest payments for the year.

what is tax form 1098e student loan interest

When to deduct student loan interest

The student loan interest deduction is taken as an adjustment when calculating your adjusted gross income, or AGI. This means you don't have to itemize your deductions to take it.

To qualify, the interest payments you make during the year must be on a student loan that you took out to put yourself, your dependents or spouse through school. If you're married filing separately, or for 2014 if your modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, is $80,000 or more if filing single or $160,000 if married filing jointly, you can't deduct any student loan interest. Your MAGI is essentially your total income minus the other adjustments you take, except for the tuition, student loan and domestic production activities deductions.

When you use TurboTax to prepare and file your taxes, you don’t need to do any of these calculations on your own. We’ll ask you questions in plain English, handle all the calculations, and put all of your answers on the appropriate tax forms.

How much interest is deductible

If you're eligible to deduct student loan interest, TurboTax will put your information into Form 1040 to write it off. Have your 1098-E forms available when preparing your return to determine your total student loan interest paid. You can also add student loan interest payments you made that aren't reported on Form 1098-E to this total as long as the interest is paid on a qualified loan. Regardless of how much interest you paid, the maximum you can deduct is $2,500.

When Box 2 is checked

If Box 2 of Form 1098-E is checked, it means that the amount reported in Box 1 doesn't include the loan's origination fees and/or any capitalized interest. Only loans you took out before Sept. 1, 2004, however, should have box 2 checked.

An origination fee is typically a percentage of your loan that's withheld from the disbursed funds. You can include a portion of this fee as deductible interest. Dividing the origination fee by the number of years you have to pay off the loan gives you the amount you can treat as student loan interest each year. And if the lender capitalized (increased the principal loan balance) for unpaid accrued interest, you calculate the portion that's deductible each year in the same way as the origination fee.

Again, when you use TurboTax to prepare your taxes, we’ll handle all of these calculations for you.

Get every deduction you deserve


For only $54.99*
Start for Free


* Important Offer Details and Disclosures
