PROGRAMMING NOTE: Since the next two weeks are holiday weeks, I’ll be re-posting popular stories from the past, as well as posting my annual “top 5 blog posts of the year” compilation. New material will resume January 9, 2017.
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This post from 2012 is about the deduction on Iowa tax returns for tuition and fees.
The rule is: you can only claim the tuition and fees deduction on your Iowa tax return if you claimed that deduction on your federal tax return. If you claimed a tuition credit on your federal return instead of the deduction, you don’t get the deduction on your Iowa return.
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Originally published April 11, 2012
Taxpayers can take a tuition and fees deduction on Iowa tax returns — but only if they took the tuition and fees deduction on their federal 
return. If you take the American Opportunity Credit or the Lifetime Learning Credit on your federal return instead of the tuition and fees deduction, you can’t take the tuition and fees deduction on your Iowa return.
Here’s what the Iowa Department of Revenue said in a news release last week:
Please remember the tuition and fees deduction can only be taken on the Iowa return if the same deduction was taken for federal tax purposes. If the federal Lifetime Learning or American Opportunity credits were taken in lieu of the deduction, no deduction is allowed on the IA1040. This is true even though those credits are not allowed for Iowa purposes.
For some taxpayers, this may mean looking closely at the interplay between the tax benefit from the credits vs. the total tax savings (federal and state combined) of the tuition and fees deduction.