I am reviewing the information my dad put into FAFSA, and I think he has made a couple mistakes.
I know income tax is how much tax both my parents paid, so it can’t be more that the AGI right? For example the AGI can’t be 105K while the income tax is 110k right?
Also, for the student section, I think he thought that was talking about him. He put me as “Head of the Household”, which I am not. I didn’t not file taxes in 2015, as I made only a couple houndres dollars during the summer. Since I don’t have an income (and no savings, no money), shouldn’t all the information under the student section be $0?
I’m just really worried about the mistakes he made. Would FAFSA alert him of all these mistakes or would they just calculate my need using this info? It hasn’t been submitted yet. Because if he has down that I made 100k and all these things, that would obviously play a huge factor into how much money I’m givin.
I’m pretty sure that’s not possible. I believe deductions bring down your AGI, so maybe he has a lot of those. Make sure he copies 100% word for word from his 2015 tax returns
You are not head of household, so you need to get that changed. That will drastically impact your EFC. You should have 0$ under everything since you did not file taxes. Do you actually have 0$? You don’t have a bank account with 100 bucks under your name or anything? No cash in your wallet?
If it hasn’t been submitted yet, go over it with your dad and fix the mistakes.
@Madison85 can you think of a situation where the AGI would be less than taxes paid??
The student section should be YOUR information…not his. If you had NO income…and paid no taxes, the amounts should,be $0.
Your parent AGI and taxes are taken right off of your parent 2015 tax return. Did your dad use that when he was completing the fafsa?
Actually, if your dad completed a 2015 tax return, you can save yourself a lot of effort by linking to the IRS Data Retrieval Tool on the fafsa form. Your dad would do this for his tax return. I’m assuming he filed a joint return with your mom. Is this the case??
Do NOT submit this fafsa until the corrections are made.
And NO…the fafsa folks won’t send you corrections…although it’s not likely yours will submit with taxes higher than income.
So under the student section, although I made a bit of money during the summer (but didn’t file taxes), I put 0 for everything except the question about current balance of cash/savings/checking accounts. For that I put $100.
Also should the AGI be the sum of how much he put for Parent 1 (earnings from working) and Parent 2 (earnings from working)? Like if he put 70k for parent 1 and 40k for parent 2, then the AGI should be 110k right?
You can put that you are not going to file a return on the FAFSA, but you should still report what you earned in 2015.
If your 2015 income was $0 you put $0, if your income was $200 you put that. If you had self employment income of $400 or more I think you need to file a tax return.
Your dad should use the “link to IRS feature” in the FAFSA, it should bring over AGI, taxes paid from the 2015 tax return. Then he has to allocate what his earnings from work were and those of your mom.
If he is parent 1 on FAFSA he puts his income from working for parent 1, and your mom’s for parent 2.
AGI can also include interest, which is not income from working.
Not necessarily. There may be other income that is included in AGI, such as taxable interest and dividends, capital gains, etc.
No. If you made any money in 2015, even if it wasn’t enough to file a tax return, you must report in on FAFSA. You can’t just put $0 if you earned any amount of money.
Well I just thought of a situation where the AGI can be more than the income tax.
If there is a net operating loss for regular tax that is larger than the net operating loss allowed for alternative minimum tax (and perhaps assorted positive adjustments for AMT), a taxpayer could have income tax that is larger than AGI.