<p>How am I supposed to fill out the 2011 Income and Benefits section of the CSS Profile when my family hasn't even submitted the taxes for the 2011 year?
(The year isn't even over! Isn't this supposed to be done in April 2012?)</p>
<p>That’s a very good question - especially when the bulk of the family income is from a business. I generally have no clue what our personal income is going to be until our accountant does our business taxes. Normally that doesn’t happen until late February or early March, but we are primed to get the ball rolling earlier this year, because of the need to file FAFSA and an updated CSS PROFILE.</p>
<p>I made basically wild guesses when I did the PROFILE for my D’s one EA school that requires it. Therefore, we will take any financial aid offer they make with a grain of salt until after we submit a revised version in early February.</p>
<p>^ this was the issue with the CSS for us this year. H has a business and does the taxes, so he had to compile all of that information year to date, then added in the last 2 months information from 2010 to ballpark guestimate. I think he’s really close to accurate and at least will be able to do the remaining 2 months of the year very quickly to get in accurate numbers early next year.</p>
<p>This is how it is for all fr applicants, you have to submit with estimates and correct them later. It gets better, deadlines for continuing students are usually later and within the possibility of doing taxes before they are due.</p>
<p>We only filled out PROFILE for one school, but I wasn’t aware of the opportunity to make corrections through CSS.
However since we submitted the schools forms as well as 1040 & W-2s for verification, the college had all of our correct numbers eventually.</p>
<p>Corrections cannot be made on Profiles you have already submitted. What you have to do is print out a hard copy, mark up the corrections, and mail that to the school.</p>
<p>You can, however, update the profile and submit the updated version to new schools.</p>