Its the kids return, its in his SSN.  He's not a student and with this income hes got too much to be a dependent.  The kid joined the military and the GI Bill paid for all his schooling, so hes got no need for this to be used for education.

Parent has been dumping money into it for 10 years, she said it started as an educational ROTH or something like that?   Then it changed it to a Coverdell ESA.

Looks like its all been invested in stocks, Mom was under the assumption that it would be capital gains, since they had to sell stock to get the distribution....so Ive got the basis of the stocks that were sold to distribute the money, but Im not sure if that would be the basis for this distribution.

She also made ROTH contributions for him for 2023 and 2024, but hes got NO earned income, so I made her take those out ASAP.

I'll fiddle with it some more and mark him as a student with no expenses and see what happens.