The Pell grant is a federal program, and federal aid has to use federal rules. My understanding is that only 2015 will be used to determine 2017-2018 federal aid, unless a student requests a professional judgment & provides information that the school feels supports the use of 2016 to better represent that student’s situation.
@kelsmom Perfect. VCU’s 2016-2017 verification forms will require verification of 2015’s tax information, so I’m hoping that they will just keep these same forms for the 2017-2018 verification. http://finaid.vcu.edu/media/sem/financial-aid/docs/pdf/315-16IncomeExpenseIND.pdf
Now THAT is something that has not yet been worked out! 
You would absolutely have to fill out new verification forms - one year’s forms cannot be used for another year, that is for sure. How to message all of that will be confusing. It only happens one time, during the switch-over year.
@kelsmom Sure, but they’d still be based off of the 2015 tax year? And, in that case, everything will still be the same… or, they will use 2016’s tax information/income to handle this form, in which case, my original question is answered: 2016’s income will be used for the 2017-2018 FAFSA.
Yes, it’s the same year used. However, the verification forms have to be based on the academic year. So for one year, the tax year will be the same as it was the year before - but the verification forms will be for the new year. Yup, it’s going to be a confusing year!
Great… so this transition will be very confusing. It will end up requiring tax documents from two different years 
@kelsmom And, then would this mean that for the 2018-2019 school year, 2016 tax information will be used for the FAFSA and 2017 tax information for verification?
Only if the school wants to do it that way. Those forms appear to be institution specific.
@BelknapPoint Yes, but the purpose of the forms are to verify what’s on our FAFSA. Here’s another form that I have been required to fill out both years so far: http://finaid.vcu.edu/media/sem/financial-aid/docs/pdf/15-16VerificationIND.pdf
No. Here is what is needed:
2016-2017 2015 taxes for FAFSA and verification; verification forms from 2016-2017
2017-2018 2015 taxes for FAFSA and verification; verification forms from 2017-2018
2018-2019 2016 taxes for FAFSA and verification; verification forms form 2018-2019
The only thing that changes is that 2015 taxes are used in two years … after that, the shift to prior-prior year is complete. Submitting taxes in 2017-2018 will be easy -you can link to the IRS DRT to transfer them (assuming you qualify to use the DRT, as most people do). If you can’t use the DRT - for example if you filed an amended return in 2015 - you WILL (most likely - the final rules aren’t out yet) have to provide the returns twice. Maybe not, but maybe. That part isn’t clear yet.
@kelsmom Ah, okay. I thought you meant that the FAFSA verification would need to verify 2016’s income. Nonetheless, the question about the verification forms remains… will the letterhead just change to 2017-2018 and maintain the same information from 2016-2017s verification forms? This is going to be fun…
So what percentage of students need to submit verification forms, and how do those students get selected? I’ve never had to deal with that.
@BelknapPoint I’ve heard that 30% of people are selected for verification. I’ve been selected both years of college so far.
Lucky you. kelsmom, are you sure that once the switch is made to prior-prior year, the verification forms will ask about prior year? If so, they won’t really be “verifying” anything, they’ll be asking for new data.
Actually, the verification forms themselves don’t ask for any info that is on the tax returns; they focus on all the non-tax return stuff. The purpose of these forms is to verify info on the FAFSA like untaxed income, household size, and number in college. This info could be different in the two years that use the 2015 return … but the 2015 tax info stays the same. EFC can (but might not) differ between the two years due to the non-tax return info that will be collected.
P.S. It used to be that every school had to verify at least 30% of all FAFSAs received. That is no longer the rule - hasn’t been for a couple years. Some schools might end up with more than 30%, but schools like mine end up verifying fewer than 30% (I am at a graduate school).
@kelsmom But the forms also have you verify your income and expenses for the tax year, see here: http://finaid.vcu.edu/media/sem/financial-aid/docs/pdf/315-16IncomeExpenseIND.pdf
I probably get verified, because I get a lot of aid. It’s not a horrible process; I just fill out the Income/Expense Verification and Independent Verification Worksheet.
The VCU verification forms linked in post #21 ask about some tax stuff… gross wages, business income, etc.
I would say that EFC for the two years that both use 2015 tax data will probably differ at least a little, because even though the income information will stay the same, the asset information will likely be different.
VCU includes info that is not on the typical form, which is fine. You’d have to just list the 2015 info twice, once on each year’s form, if you got verified twice. You are filling out the form and signing it, so the school is not going to fish out your prior year form to fill in the blanks for you on the next year’s form (although they may fish it out to compare them).
If you don’t exceed the asset threshold either year, it won’t affect the EFC.
@kelsmom Yes… no problem with assets. I have loans to payoff before I can ever think about buying a house, investing, or even saving… So, given what we’ve concluded tonight, I feel a lot more confident about what I initially thought versus what VCU told me.