So I left my email unchecked because I thought everything was cool but when i checked my email I had a fafsa mail saying my financial aid information needed to be fixed.
Basically fafsa says there is something wrong because my agi is above what my parents made. for example my parents made 20000 together, my father made 10000, and my mother made 5000, my dad was unemployed and received compensation which was 5000. I put the 10000 and 5000 of my parents for a total of 15000 but fafsa puts a red x on it and says it cannot be submitted. In more detail i put the 10000 for parent one and the 5000 for parent 2. So where do i put the 5000 from the unemployment compensation?
This is driving me crazy and this is the only forum to display my exact problem. need help asap plz
The IRS Data Retrieval Tool is used when you complete your FAFSA. You will see a place on the FAFSA for this. If your parents completed their tax return well over 3 weeks ago, did not ow any taxes,mand filed electronically, they should be able to use this.
It has NOTHING to do with their tax filing status.
After we did the DRT, with a tax return married filing jointly, we had to manually assign income from work to parent 1 and parent 2. You will list dad’s work income for him and mom’s work income for her.
You don’t list the unemployment benefits with the “income from working” on FAFSA because no social security taxes are paid on that money.
The FAFSA will know the total parent income from the “adjusted gross income” AGI on the tax return, which includes all income from work and unemployment benefits.
Also get in the habit of checking your email on a regular basis. Your college might be sending important emails in the coming weeks/months. And once in college, professors will be communicating via email.
what do you mean fafsa will know? Ok so What I get from all the replies is that I can use the drt but my parents don’tt go to any H and R block or use any tax services, they are old school and file it themselves.
So Iine like 37 it says my parents agi was 20000 but I can just put 15000 because unemployment benefits don’t count? So just my dads 20k and moms 5k. Because this is the only thing I need to fix as of now.
It doesn’t matter how your parents get their taxes completed and filed. You can still use the DRT. They don’t have to go to a tax preparer. That has NOTHING to do with the IRS DRT.
Your parents submit their tax return. The IRS has it. You do the FAFSA. You can link to the IRS DRT.
I’m not sure what you don’t understand about this.
And for the record…most colleges REQUIRE students to either link to the IRS DRT or submit a tax transcript (note…not a copy of the return…a tax transcript…which is gotten from the IRS).
When you use the “link to IRS tool” in the FAFSA it will bring in the information from your parents’ tax return. It will transfer over AGI, tax paid, income from working for both parents, see above on how to allocate income betwen parents.
The AGI is the total adjusted gross income on the parent tax return. Sounds like that is $20,000 because it includes unemployment benefits. They are taxable so are listed on federal tax return.
But when FAFSA asks for “income from working” that does not include unemployment benefits. They want the number from work income and other income as listed from line 7 +12 +18 on the 1040 tax return form or line 7 on form 1040A.
Sounds like that is $10,000 for dad and $5,000 for mom.
The FAFSA has both listed, the AGI and the work income, that’s what I mean with “the FAFSA will know”. Both numbers are used for different calculations in the EFC formula.
As long as it’s all reported correctly that’s what matters.
When it asks for AGI, you put what it says on the tax return on line 37, the total adjusted gross income (including UE).
When it asks for “income from working” you put what each parent earned from work (usually listed in box 1 of their W2 form which the employer gives them).
We are saying that if your parents filed their tax return a few weeks ago you might be able to use the “link to IRS” tool in the FAFSA where the information would be imported directly from the tax return for you.
Thanks to everyone here I solved my solution. I asked at school and they explained it in simpler terminology. It was the same thing said here after reading through. Thanks to everyone and sorry if I frustrated anyone.
I’m glad they were able to explain it. I didn’t know how much simpler to put it. If you have never dealt with taxes I guess you wouldn’t know what AGI, W2 income and such means.