Hi guys. My mother and I are trying to fill out the 2015-2016 FAFSA, but we’ve run into a couple problems. Here’s the situation:
- Father is not in the picture and has not been in over 8 years, so he was not included on the FAFSA last year.
- During 2014, my mother received both social security disability payments and long term disability payments.
- During 2013, my mother primarily received long term disability payments and then she and I both started receiving SSD payments in December 2013. (I graduated high school this past summer though so my payments were stopped and when those were stopped, the long term disability payments restarted. Also, the long term disability payments are sort of "garnished." It's really tricky. My mother owes the long term disability company - The Hartford - because of the social security disability benefits that I received during my senior year. So basically, each month, about $900 is taken out and we're left with the other $400. They started paying the $400 in June, because that's when my SSD checks stopped. She will continue to owe them - and the $900 will continue to be taken out - until this upcoming June or July.) Because of the long term disability payments during this year, my mother's income ended up being around 30k.
So this year I was told that Social Security Disability is NOT included on the FAFSA. I first read about it on a thread on here and was told this is true when I emailed them. Since our financial situation has changed drastically this year and we’re receiving much less than last year, we’ve estimated her income from the long term disability payments to be about $10,080. But that includes the $900 that is being taken out, so that’s not actually how much money we’re receiving.
The problem is I keep receiving this error message:
“The parents’ adjusted gross income or income earned from work is significantly less than the amount reported last year.”
And then it proceeds to ask me to verify my mother AND my father’s incomes, though as I said before, he’s never even been on my FAFSA before.
These are the specific questions being asked:
What was your mother’s adjusted gross income for 2014? This amount is found on IRS Form 1040-line 37. ----> We’ve put down the $10,080.
How much did your father earn from working (wages, salaries, tips, etc.) in 2014? ----> which would be 0
How much did your mother earn from working (wages, salaries, tips, etc.) in 2014? ----> which would be 0
Can anybody help with this? I’d like to submit this ASAP. Do you think I’ve made a mistake somewhere with the long term disability payments? I’m starting to think I did or if not, we made one last year. Where would this be listed - would it be as “wages” or “other taxable income”?
Other taxable income (alimony received, business and farm income, capital gains, pensions, annuities, rents, unemployment compensation, Social Security, Railroad Retirement, and all other taxable income).
Thank you in advance.
So just an update…
I was able to get the application to go through by changing my mother’s eligibility to file a 1040A/EZ form from “Don’t know” to “Yes” because I was able to skip the asset questions.
My mother told me to go ahead and submit it like that even though she generally does itemize deductions (thus making her ineligible for the 1040A/EZ) because she probably would not be able to itemize this year due to having less medical deductions. Does that sound about right or am I going to end up having to make a correction and have to figure out why we’re getting that error message with the asset questions?
I am curious as to why you were asked for your father’s income. Did you say your parents are married? If you said that your mom is single/separated/divorced, there should be no prompts for father’s info. The prompt regarding income being lower this year doesn’t keep you from being able to file your FAFSA - it just is there to prompt you to double-check your numbers. The father info, however, is a weird request if you aren’t supposed to include your dad’s info.
SSD is not reported on FAFSA. Your LTD issue is a bit tricky. You need to find out what The Hartford is saying your mom needs to report to the IRS as LTD income for 2014 … THAT number is what you have to put on the FAFSA, even if it includes the amount repaid to them each month (in that case, you can ask the school to do a professional judgment review to possibly remove the income that is repaid … but don’t bother if your EFC is already 0 with the money included … since 0 is as low as you can get). I assume the LTD is taxable and reported on the 1040 (ask your mom - if not, it is counted as untaxed income).
As long as your mom is actually going to be eligible to file a 1040A or 1040EZ for 2014, you should be fine. But the issues you mention had nothing to do with assets … they had to do with income. I don’t understand why switching your tax return answer made the issues you had with income go away. Did you change anything other than the type of return filed?
Strange
Yes, I’m wondering too. I put down that they were divorced.
And I know that that prompt wasn’t supposed to stop me from filing the FAFSA, but oddly, it did. That was the problem. After asking for that info, it would proceed to ask me to re-verify other asset questions. After double checking those, it would lead me back to the original prompt! It was an endless loop of the same questions, making it impossible to file.
I’ll let her know what you said about that so she can contact them about this. I assumed it would be taxable as well.
I changed the $10,000 to be more accurate: $10,080. But other than that, only the form eligibility was changed.
Thank you for replying.
I am wondering if maybe there are some issues with the FAFSA logic. It is the first day that it’s “live,” so that is a possibility. Are you still not able to submit?
I was able to submit it by changing the form eligibility, but now I’m wondering if I’ll have the same issue in the future (when I make a correction after my mother files her taxes) since the income information isn’t likely to change.
I suspect this might be a glitch that would be fixed by the time you resubmit. If you still have trouble at that time, post again.
Do either of you file taxes at all?? Because many applicants have option of having FFSA linked to theirfederal taxes so that the true “numbers” will be right.
Even in either of you, and especially you as you are going to be a tax paying adult for next 40 years, should go online with say HR block and submit an online app. To file your taxes. ITS VERY user friendly! Then I recommend you use same thing each year. The click of a button you get all your past tax forms etc. It can be $20 or 30 bucks but I find it a terrific service to have. Plus, if there’s any questionable things you can call HR Block.
Otherwise, from what I know since no one is legally able to file their taxes yet the FAFSA states that part of the form will need to be edited when tax numbers/income numbers are known. So that many , or most, FAFSA apps are not exact at this time and that is understood told by them. So you have a few weeks to figure out what is the error on yours. Skip. Or hit the button saying ‘you do not wish to list parent income.’
Okay, thank you. Hopefully it is just a glitch.
I don’t file taxes, but yes my mother files them.
It didn’t allow me to skip any information or say I didn’t want to list the income, but I suppose that could’ve been another glitch as well?
No, you can’t say you don’t want to include the parent income. That would cause it to reject.
Ah, okay, thought so. Thanks again!