We filed our taxes before the law took effect that up to $10,200 of unemployment benefits are excluded from income. The IRS amended our tax return. When we do the FAFSA and use the IRS retrieval tool, will the IRS amended return be pulled for the FAFSA? If the original tax return is pulled our AGI will be higher simply because we filed our tax return earlier. Since we cannot see on the FAFSA form the numbers that were retrieved, how will we know if the corrected lower AGI is on the FAFSA. Has anyone been in this situation? Thanks in advance .
I don’t believe you can use the DRT if you have amended your taxes but I could be wrong. @kelsmom
Also, I think this post would be better in the financial aid section of this forum. Would you like me to move it…or would you like to do so?
I am not sure if the tax return can be uploaded through DRT. Technically, it’s not amended by the taxpayer, so I don’t know how the IRS system treats it. I encourage you to call the school financial aid office & ask them.
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We did not amend our tax return, the IRS amended it to reflect the new law. If you can move this post for me to the financial aid section, I would appreciate it , thank you.
Moved it!
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Are the tax form numbers imported through the DRT process viewable on the SAR after the FAFSA has been processed? If the answer is yes, this is probably the best way to know if the corrected lower AGI has been used in the EFC calculation process.
@BelknapPoint if one uses the DRT, the numbers from the tax return are not visible to them….at all. At least that was my experience.
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We are in the same situation. I plan to notify my kids’ colleges’ financial aid offices, as well as include details about this in the CSS Profile that we have to file each year, even as a continuing student. I also have to send in the 1040, and I was considering attaching an addendum to that to explain why the AGI on the 1040 is different than the AGI as computed (hopefully) by the IRS.
And you can always call them after you get your package to confirm that they used the correct AGI.
Same situation. Used numbers from our original return (not drt). I looked at our tax transcript and the numbers are all the same, so I’m not sure if an amended return exists and if it does, where to find it.
I reached out to a couple of schools. One said to amend our return and refile, but I know that’s not right.
And amending would take a long time at this point.
Changing your fafsa is fast, but amending a tax return that the IRS said not to is just going to cause more problems.
The IRS amended our tax return (we did not amend it) after we filed because the law changed. My question is if anyone has done the DRT in this situation and the correct amended tax return (that the IRS amended ) was pulled , not the original that we filed. I know I can manually put the numbers in but I would rather avoid that.
I’d just enter everything manually. It’s not that hard.
Have you had the chance to pull your 2020 tax transcript from the IRS website? (I don’t know if they’re available yet.) I don’t recall if I’ve pulled ours, but it might give you some insight into what the DRT would pull. And it might be needed if you fill in manually.
A thought…
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Financial aid offices are required to look at all FAFSA forms to see if they need to exclude the money. So it doesn’t matter if the DRT pulled in the original numbers … the financial aid office will make a correction on their end. Impact of American Rescue Plan Change to Tax Treatment of Unemployment Benefits on Student Aid Eligibility for Cycle 2022–23 (Updated Oct. 15, 2021) | Knowledge Center
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If you filed your taxes before the law took effect, the IRS will automatically amend it for you. It took about 4 months for us for the IRS to amend.
@TdoesCollege I did but the regular tax transcript is the same as our initial filing. There’s an account transcript with adjusted numbers.
Thank you @kelsmom! That’s good to know. I’m not the op, but I’ve been wondering if I was going to have to deal with this for every school.