Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
Education doesn’t just make you smarter, it’s a smart way for you to save money on taxes. Taxpayers may be eligible for tax credits for expenses they pay for higher education for themselves and their dependent children.
Hope scholarship
The Hope scholarship credit is available to students during their first two years of post-secondary education. To qualify, the student must be enrolled at least half-time in a degree or certificate program for any portion of the year.
This credit can save you money, but it’s nonrefundable. That means it might reduce your tax to zero but that’s the limit.
The Hope credit is provided on a per-student basis. It applies only to tuition and fees, not to books, dormitory costs or other living expenses. And it’s phased out if you exceed certain earning limits.
Lifetime learning credit
The Lifetime learning credit lives up to its name. It covers college juniors, seniors, graduate students, adults returning to college. Students carrying less than half the usual course load also are eligible to claim this credit, so it could help you pay for costs if you’re only taking a couple of classes.
In fact, even if you’re long out of school, you can take this credit to help offset the cost of a non-college course you take that’s designed to help improve your job skills. Similar to the Hope credit, the Lifetime learning tax credit is available for tuition and required fees less grants, scholarships and other tax-free educational assistance.
The maximum credit is determined on a per-taxpayer (family) basis, regardless of the number of post-secondary students in the family, and is phased out at the same income levels as the Hope scholarship tax credit.
Families will be able to claim the Lifetime learning tax credit for some members of their family and the Hope Scholarship tax credit for others who qualify in the same year.
Share