Disbursement in December 2020 for Tuition paid in January 2021

[troynkelly]

First child just went off to college. Made the critical error of taking a disbursement from 529 on 12/31/2020 and then made tuition payment via credit card for spring semester on 1/1/2021. Now paying $3K penalty. Is there any recourse or was this a $3K mistake we have to live with? I already spoke with university, CPA & 529 account holder. Should I call the IRS? Very expensive mistake when disbursement and payment were within 24 hours of each other, but is 2 different years. 529 account holder said we had a 60 day grace period, but we didn't discover the problem until 75 days past disbursement.

[mark]

Here's a link to a Previous conversation where we briefly talked about it. Of course I am not telling you to do something wrong, but it is not 100% clear that it would be considered an unqualified withdrawal by the IRS.