Education Department Relaxes Financial Aid Process in the Absence of IRS Tool

Paying for College
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/24/education-department-relaxes-financial-aid-process-in-the-absence-of-irs-tool/?utm_term=.e444e6e3e606

Contact your school if you have questions about how this might relate to any of your current documentation requests.

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Thank you!!

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BLESS I’ve been waiting weeks for the non filing verification to come in the mail, still hasn’t arrived

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I know my aid office emailed me saying the non-filer thing isn’t needed. I got all the regular paperwork done for fall, just gotta wait to see what I get.

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Is the irs retrieval still a problem for identity theft? @kelsmom

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The reason the DRT was down was to address the identity theft issues. Supposedly it is safe now to be used for 2018-2019 FAFSA.

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I just tried to link my 2018-2019 FAFSA with IRS via the DRT and the next screen said linking wasn’t possible b/c of identity theft (we did have identity theft a few years ago and someone filed taxes with my spouse’s SSN). Said I had to call IRS (of course, got the message that it would be a hold time of 60-90 minutes). I have my 1040, but it seems that FAFSA and colleges really want that IRS verification done online.

Also, as an aside, before I knew linking via DRT was possible, I proactively ordered a hard copy of my 2016 return transcript from the IRS online order form a month ago and it still hasn’t arrived. Said it would be here in `5-10 days.

Advice?

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I think if you can’t link, the college will accept the tax transcript. Good thing you already ordered it.

Basically the DRT verifies that the numbers on the FAFSA are corresponding with what’s on your tax return.

You can manually report the AGI, income earned from work (for you and spouse separately), tax paid and such from your 2016 tax return.

If you used TurboTax for your taxes, I think they have a handy FAFSA worksheet you can print.

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When your return transcript and non filer verification arrived, did you all send directly to colleges? I was thinking I could add to IDOC, if college uses that.

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Do you have to send those to all the schools?

I would think that only the school actually awarding aid (the one student attends), would need the tax transcript and nonfiling verification letter.

Or do I have this wrong?

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Be aware you and your student will each get a letter from the IRS advising that you have used the IRS download thing for FAFSA. Came in the mail about a week later.