Hi There, My wife has spent the prior 3 years in college for which we've spent about 50k total, she finished the school last year in the summer; at the beginning of 2015 we ran out of money and we borrowed some from banks, so I took 23k from my 401k to help cover 2013 / 2014 / 2015 college expense. However last year she only spent 6k for college, the difference to 50k was spent on prior years.
When i report the 401k distribution there is a penalty (10%) exemption for higher education, however the question there is how much money you've spent for that education. It is not clear if we are talking about year 2015 (which in our case was only 6k) so my question is am i allowed to put the entire 50k that we've spent for the entire college (that includes expenses for 2013 and 2014) ? apparently that makes a difference on what the actual penalty fee results.


Thank you!