I (21F) am in my last year of college. For the past 4 years, i've been living pretty independently-- I've been working while in school since I was a freshman, and have slowly been taking on more responsibility and independence as I've gotten older. The only areas I get help in are with tuition from my mom (I take out 3k-ish in loans and she pays the remaining 1.9k), health related expenses (dental & vision), and rent (My biological dad sends me $500 and I pay the remaining $700-$800). Like once every month or two, I'll ask my parents for help on groceries, which is always around $100. I work two jobs (around 35 hours per week right now) and pay for food, shopping, random expenses, and the occasional summer/ spring break trip.

I've had a complicated relationship with my parents for basically my whole life. To keep it brief, my stepfather Doug (46M) hasn't always treated me or my mom (49F) the best, and though our relationship has somewhat improved since I moved out, I still feel a lot of resentment towards him. He is very manipulative and controlling of the people in his life, and my quiet, passive mom unfortunately gets the worst of it. One of their biggest issues right now is money-- even though Doug is the higher-earning partner (he makes about 80k and my mom around 60k), he expects my mom to take on a large share of the expenses (and basically all expenses related to me, lol), which frequently puts her in tough spots where she's forced to ask for financial help from my grandmother and sometimes even me. Anytime she asks its always an expense related to me (tuition, dentist fees etc.), so she doesn't OUTRIGHT ask me for money, but its still an expense. Given that I know how he is, I try to pitch in where I can, but i'm still learning to manage my own finances and don't have a lot of extra money to move around.

Despite having worked through college, this is my first year filing taxes. I wasn't making enough to require me to file, and I was content allowing my parents to claim me as I figured the little money I was earning from my part-time jobs wouldn't earn me much of a return and justify the effort. Getting into my junior and senior year, my friends started talking about their tax returns and the INSANE amounts of money they were getting back (around 2-4k), which obviously sounded very appealing to me as a broke college student. I decided to file early, and soon realized that I was eligible for a pretty significant education credit. I was able to receive about 2.5k back-- for me that's a bit more than a month's wages, so MAJOR score. I went through the process without much thought, and even asked my parents to provide me information about that tax credit when I was filing, which didn't illicit much a reaction.

Fast forward to now-- I get an angry text from my mom this morning saying that me claiming that credit caused them to owe $3000 in taxes, and Doug is making her pay for it. Apparently, owes more than she does (duh, he makes 20k more?), and saw this as reason enough for her to cover the difference. At first, I felt super defensive. Given that I pay the majority of my expenses, I felt like claiming that credit was justified. Hell, if it WASN'T justified, the IRS wouldn't have let me take it. However, her argument was that since she's helping me with my tuition, she was allowed to take that credit. This argument honestly tugged on me a bit, as I know she's had trouble paying her part of my tuition at times and obviously receives no help from Doug.

Ultimately, I told my mom that she was barking up the wrong tree-- she should tell Doug to shove it and that HE was in the wrong for once again trying to push their shared expenses completely on her. She seemed to agree with my argument for a bit as she settled down after that, but it seems like she talked to Doug between texts because she came back with the same ferocity a few hours later. I haven't replied yet.

I know that legally i'm covered, since otherwise I wouldn't have been allowed to take that credit. However, I'm really conflicted morally-- I know that my choice probably put my mom in a tough situation at home, and she's likely only giving me a hard time since Doug is putting pressure on her. On the other hand, there are a looot of unexpected costs I've had to deal with in this final year (grad regalia, photos, clothes for grad, professional clothes for my internship, etc.), and the extra money really helped me cover those added expenses.

That being said, AITAH?