FAFSA Frustration

<p>I logged on to make corrections to FAFSA now that I have done my 2011 returns. I tried to use the retrieval tool, not surprised that I couldn't (thank to latichever's post), so I tried to enter info manually and kept getting this error: "your income is much lower than last year's". Gee -- thanks for reminding me. It's a problem for me too.</p>

<p>Is this more of an "FYI"?</p>

<p>I tried to plow ahead and fill in numbers anyway, but now the questions were all about "your father's income" and I could not fill in my numbers (as the student's mother). Also I had one correction to business value based on recently info from our business accountant -- if I do the autoretrieval tool does it fill in income from tax returns but uses initial values for assets?</p>

<p>Last year, we kept getting that “your income is low” message too. I ignored it. It probably will trigger verification. We were verified, but that was not unusual, as we had been verified 4/6 years of filling out FAFSA’s.
Do the “father’s income” values need to be changed, or are they correct? It here are no corrections to that, shouldn’t you be able to go right to the mother section? I can’t remember the form! Can’t help on the retrieval tool, as I did not want to wait for it, so just updated by hand as you did.</p>

<p>I think it’s an FYI. We got the “Oh, oh, you paid substantially more in taxes even though your income is almost the same!” message. And we continued to get the message even after we updated using the retrieval tool, which pulled in only our AGI and taxes paid. We were selected for verification, and I can’t help but wonder if that happened because our fatsa was hinky enough to generate a message.</p>

<p>Thanks ordinarylives and dlbarber – yes, the message must be a built in auto response.</p>

<p>As for filling in my income, yes it’s grayed out (i.e., I can’t fill it in). I’m going to call FAFSA today (wish me luck). Right now, I can fill in “father’s income” but not my income. I thought last year they called it Parent 1 and Parent 2…</p>

<p>I think I’d rather fill it in manually so I can correct the assets too.</p>

<p>It is my understanding that only income can be changed & once the fafsa is filed the first time assets can no longer be changed.</p>

<p>Assets can be corrected if there was an error in the original report. For example, if the figures used were from an end-of-year statement, but there was activity between then and the actual filing date, the figures can be corrected to reflect value on the date of filing.</p>

<p>Classof2015</p>

<p>Did you use your own FAFSA pin or your child’s pin when you tried to use the retrieval tool?</p>

<p>Hi YaYa – I tried my own PIN. At this point, I’m just going to mail the tax info.</p>

<p>happymom1 – right – FAFSA asks for assets as of date of filing FAFSA so I updated them, and part of the assets were business net worth, which was only now available once audited financials were prepared, so I felt ok in correcting those too. </p>

<p>I think I’m going to email my fin aid person and explain this to them also.</p>