Making the decision to send a child to private school can hit the bottom line hard for many families' pocketbooks. With private education costs soaring into the five figures per child per year, finding some IRS tax relief can be a huge help. For parents of kids with special needs ranging from ADD/ADHD to autism and beyond, understanding how tuition deduction for these expenses works can be a tremendous help.
Private Education and Tuition Deduction
In most cases, children who are in public schools and who have diagnoses of special needs receive assistance to support academic and behavioral work. Children suspected of having special needs in public schools receive what is called a " core evaluation," a series of tests and observations by specialists to determine whether the child has issues that severely affect his or her ability to function academically and/or behaviorally in a classroom.
Research and read up on the topic of deductible medical expenses and tuition deductions for this subject, and look for newspaper articles, white papers, special reports, promotions and seminars devoted to the topic. As the issue of special needs education gains more attention, an increasing number of parents need to learn how to help shave the costs of raising kids, and deducting private school tuition and private lesson costs is possible if you leave no source of information unresearched.
If the child is determined to have deficits, then additional specialists are typically called in. Once a child receives a specific diagnosis, the public school creates an Individual Education Plan, or IEP.
Diagnoses triggering an IEP can include:
- ADD
- ADHD
- Asperger Syndrome
- Autism
- PDD-NOS
- Tourette Syndrome
- OCD
- Anxiety Disorder
- Epilepsy
and medical issues, such as Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, and more. This list is not meant to be all-inclusive, but rather to give a sense of some of the diagnoses children with special needs can receive to gain an IEP.
In most cases, the public schools can provide a free, appropriate, public education to children with IEPs. Sometimes, however, the child's issues cannot be met by the public schools, an parents must turn to private schools for assistance.
IRS Tax Relief and Special Needs
By law, public schools must pay for the costs of private education for children with IEPs whose educational needs cannot be met by the school district. For instance, if a child with autism has behavioral therapy needs to be academically successful, and the public schools cannot provide that therapy but a private school can, the public school must pay the tuition for that child - even if it reaches $40,000 per year or more.
In rare instances, however, parents may find themselves negotiating with public schools to have their child with special needs moved to a private school at district expense while the negotiation is still going on. Or parents may lose court cases against school districts to have their child placed in a private school, but a medical certification of the special need still holds. In this case, the parent must pay for the private education.
While private school tuition is not a tax-deductible item for the vast majority of families filing federal returns, for families paying tuition for a child with documented special needs whose needs cannot be met by the public school, the tuition may be classified as a medical expense by the IRS and permit a tuition deduction for IRS relief for special needs kids.
What Can Taxpayers Write Off?
If a medical doctor, ranging from a child psychiatrist to a neurologist to a primary care physician documents the child's special needs and diagnosis, and certifies that the services provided at a specific private school are necessary to meet the child's needs and provide him or her with the best supports possible, then the IRS may permit the parent claiming the child on his or her taxes to deduct the cost of private school tuition as a medical expense.
Other tuition deductions may include lessons provided specifically for children with special needs such as:
- Horseback riding
- Gymnastics
- Social skills/friendship building
- Art
- Martial arts
- Dance
- Summer camp
- School vacation camp
Such lessons can only be a write off as medical expenses if the lessons are modified to help or support the child's diagnosis. For instance, regular horseback riding classes would not be deductible, but hippotherapy with a trained counselor/rider may be deductible.
Consult a tax adviser before making any tuition deduction based on medical or behavioral diagnoses. In most cases with proper documentation, deducting private school tuition for special needs kids is possible, and is a huge burden lifted from the shoulders of already-overwhelmed parents. The Internal Revenue Service offers some free tax assistance through the Volunteers In Tax Assistance, or VITA, program. Call 800-906-9887 to ask whether private school is a tax deductible expense in your case.
Read books, newspaper articles, magazines and newsletters, and websites devoted to tax deductions and special needs. Unless you're a tax expert, you can't rule out the ability to deduct something as simple as a swimming lesson, or as expensive as an entire 10-week session of summer camp. Be thorough in learning about private school tuition deduction to reduce your tax burden.
To learn more about tax planning strategies to reduce liability and the bottom line, please read:
Private Lesson Tax Deduction - Find out whether gymnastics, dance, swimming, and other lessons might be tax deductible, and under which conditions.
Federal Energy Tax Credits - Learn how to save money on windows, doors, insulation, HVAC and more in the form of tax credits of up to $1500.
Solar, Wind, and Geothermal Energy Tax Credits - Read about IRS regulations that extend through 2016 giving an uncapped 30% tax credit on alternative energy systems and upgrades.
Melanie Zoltan - Melanie Zoltan is a former college professor and administrator who has written for About.com, PCWorld, Brain Child, Thomson Gale, and ...
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