This is our third year filing a FAFSA but the first year that 2 of our kid will be in college. Our income declined from 2019 from 2018. Last year’s EFC still seemed high, but this year’s has quadrupled! I don’t see anything I did wrong - should I “Correct” it by filling everything in manually - I had used the DTR? Thanks for any thoughts.
Did you do a retirement account rollover in 2019?
Don’t correct it yet! Answer the questions here first.
Agree…did you do a retirement rollover in 2019? If you did, and didn’t indicate this on the FAFSA, that rollover would be counted as income.
Check your asset entries on the FAFSA. Make sure they are entered correctly…no added zeros or misplaced decimal points.
And check your tax return! Make sure it’s accurate. If you did a rollover in 2019, it should be on that return too and the amount (so you wouldn’t be paying taxes on it)
Your EFC can be up to 1/3 of your annual income or higher if you have high asset value. If it is significantly higher than that you could have made a mistake. I have seen this happen with the IRS data retrieval tool, because you can’t see the tax figures once your taxes are imported into the FAFSA. If you used this tool I would recommend contacting the Financial aid office directly once your child is admitted and explaining the circumstances. It would also be worthwhile to log back into your FAFSA and be sure you didn’t inaccurately report something, I have seen this with so many families I have helped through the FAFSA process.
@TheFAFSAGuru if the family used the DRT, the data from their tax return will NOT be visible to them.
- Check the asset amounts for accuracy.
- Did this family do a retirement rollover in 2019? That could very well be the issue.
Hoping they respond!
Thank you all! I will double check everything you mentioned - and especially the retirement account rollover. I will report back, though it may take a day or two to figure everything out.
YES! It was a rollover.So…now what do I do? I’m not clear on how to adjust this.
Also - I am super appreciative to all of you who are helping me figure this out. I have been just a *little bit *stressed about this. While I wish my family could afford $224,000 a year to pay for college, that is NOT the case. 
Contact the school financial aid department to let them know what happened. They will tell you what to do. (This is a relatively common mistake. I did the 2021-2022 FAFSA to see if it was easy to overlook the rollover question; I didn’t think so. Not sure why so many parents are missing it, but we’re seeing a lot of this question on CC these days.)
Thanks, I see that there is no way to fix it and contacting the financial aid departments at the schools is the way to go.
Any thoughts on if I should contact schools now - my daughter is applying early action to a bunch of schools - or wait until we find out if she gets accepted?
I also need to fill out my older daughter’s FAFSA. I will of course not make that mistake on her’s and I will be very curious to see what the EFC ends up being on hers.
I would suggest you contact the colleges sooner than later. The colleges can easily make this correction once you provide them with the documentation of the rollover.
Don’t wait. These colleges (i would think) would rather have this correction before they prepare a financial aid package for you rather than having to redo one they already did.
@thumper1 yes I referenced that those figures are not visible when using the DRT in my comment and also suggested double checking the FAFSA for accuracy. Great point about the possible retirement withdrawal!
I wanted to give an update - I reached out to a couple of the colleges on my daughter’s FAFSA. They both said that at this point I should wait until she finds out if she is accepted to reach back out and file the correction paperwork.
Another update - my daughter was accepted to her first school. I reached out to the financial aid office and after explaining the situation, they asked for a copy of our 2019 tax return and 1099-R. After supplying these, our family’s revised EFC dropped to $23,000. Quite a change from $224,000!
Congrats. Glad the experts here could help.
@sotubotu Can that school go in and change your EFC for all schools now or do you have to have every school go back into your FAFSA and make that adjustment?
I’m hoping for this student there is no need to do anything else. She got accepted at her first choice school. If that one is affordable, she might just be done!
Did they give a reason for the discrepancy? $224k down to 23k looks like there was too many zeros for some entry.
The reason was given upthread… a qualified retirement account rollover done in 2019 was not reported on FAFSA.
Thank you I missed that.
The rollover issue seems to be a common problem that households don’t seem to be aware of.
It’s pretty common, and the question about rollovers is often overlooked. I know that I have a pop up blocker that keeps pop ups away … I wonder if that might be what is happening. If a pop up that comes up to ask about rollovers gets blocked, you may never realize it was supposed to be answered.