We are doing a FAFSA for the first time since 2009. The IRS Data Retrieval Tool was not available then.
We are doing our taxes tonight. Can we just do the FAFSA immediately afterward (yes, I know we will have to enter the data ourselves), or is there some other benefit to waiting?
Will we be able to link to the DRT for when our taxes are available?
Reports on this thread are about a week. I think ours was about that.
So…should I wait the week or so…or just enter the data myself? Honestly…it’s not that hard to enter the data. But I know for verification purposes, I need to link to the DRT.
What I’m asking…can I do the FAFSA, and link to the DRT which will be available later…or do I have to wait altogether.
Ah, missed that. Yes, you can enter it now and link later. We linked ours, but D’s was not available to link yet, so we just entered her data.
We efiled our tax return on 2/4. Return was accepted by IRS on 2/4. We filled out and submitted FAFSA with those numbers (taxact let me print out a handy FAFSA worksheet for that) on 2/6. On 2/9 we received email that FAFSA was processed. I also checked “where is my refund?” link from IRS website and it said the return had been processed and refund approved. So I went and signed into FAFSA and went to “change information” and used the IRS retrieval tool and transferred info over from IRS (same exact info, but now says “transferred from IRS” so it’s confirmed).
This is my first time ever doing this and I was surprised how fast the timeline was.