Providing financial information in scholorship applications

[hoofaman]

My kid is going through the process of requesting some scholarships, and a few of them have requested this information:

- adjusted gross income
- total federal tax paid
- total income of parent
- total income of other parent
- yearly untaxed income benefits
- total amount of cash, checking, savings, and cash value of stocks

A few questions I had:

1.) What tax year should these number be based on? I haven't filed our 2024 return yet but I have the estimated numbers, is it fine to use 2023 numbers or should I use 2024 numbers? There is a large increase in AGI 2023->2024 of about 30% so I don't want to seem sneaky, but it's not clear to me what point in time this should be. I would assume most recent so I could use estimated 2024 numbers from TurboTax

2.) total amount of cash, checking, savings, and cash value of stocks, I'm just taking the market value today of taxable accounts and I-bonds, excluding HSA and retirement accounts, I'm assuming that's right?

3.) total income of parent, I'm assuming again this is for the most recent tax year?

4.) Dividends, interest and capital gains...do I just include this as "parent income?"

I looked at the websites collecting this information and there are no details other than these fields names, seems kind of vague, I just want to provide the right info

[RickBoglehead]

You should do whatever is favorable to you, 2024 or 2023 on the income tax. On the current valuations, pick a nice dip day.

Income of parents in earnings from a job.