@OP, I realize your immediate concern is FA for college. But for your dad, Turbo Tax may not be the silver bullet for squaring with the IRS. He may need to seek professional tax assistance because he was self-employed and owes back taxes—both make for a messy situation.
Quite a number of individuals have multiple W2s (myself included). It’s unlikely that the colleges will deem that someone grossing 50k isn’t required to file.
Most schools want that info by today, IIRC. Hope he hurries!
Turbo tax it’s fine and his back taxes are irrelevant to colleges, that’s between him and the irs. All you need is his signed return. I hope he gets it done for you today, op!
Agree with @OHMomof2 absolutely. Dad’s “messy” tax situation is utterly irrelevant, and will have no impact whatsoever on his filing of a tax return for 2014. The return asks for 2014 info only - not past years. And if he’s working for someone else, and no longer self-employed, it should be pretty simple and straightforward.
I messaged him myself today reminding him how urgent it is to get it taken care of as soon as possible with today being the much preferred situation, and he said he’ll see what he can do, so I guess that’s that. I just told him to let me know. I guess if I don’t hear anything back by tonight I’ll ask how it’s going.
@Madison85 Yeah, I’m eligible for the Wisconsin covenant which would add a few extra thousand in aid. I’ve applied for quite a few scholarships too, but I’m expecting to have to take some amount on loans no matter where I go. I’m going to be going to medical school so I’ll be greatly in debt regardless.
@GMTplus7 While you’re probably right, he insisted on using TurboTax so I’m not going to argue with him about it.
@jym626 My two deadlines are tomorrow for Columbia and Thursday for Northwestern, and I emphasized to him how I need it absolutely as soon as possible. I obviously don’t want to miss either deadline, but if he didn’t get it to me until Wednesday, I wouldn’t be heartbroken since Northwestern is my first choice and Columbia was really a shot in the dark. It would just mean risking getting less aid if I was accepted by Columbia and chose to go there.
@OHMomof2 Thanks 
it sounds like he’ll be working on it today and TurboTax looks really simple, so I’m hopeful.
@dodgersmom That’s good to hear, I hope he knows that!
Don’t know if this will be an issue, but you should also know that if he has a balance due for 2014, he does not need to pay it today. The important thing is that he files. If there’s a balance owing, he can take care of that later (or never, if he prefers). All the colleges want to see is that he’s filed - they don’t care if he owes money, and his owing money will not prevent you from getting financial aid.
Tax returns filed with balances due take longer to process, so the FAFSA date retrieval tool (DRT) likely wouldn’t be available until mid-May or thereabouts, but that’s the only impact of filing a return with a balance due.
And as an ncp he won’t be on the fafsa so…no impact.
Well… he sent me a scan of his 1040EZ but he filled it out by hand… I don’t know how likely it is that he’s actually going to mail it to them. What would happen, financial aid/college wise, if he didn’t actually mail it to the IRS? Would the colleges find out? It was such a relief when he sent me the scan but I feel like he used this as a list minute cop out: send me the scan to give to my colleges and never actually file it, whereas TurboTax, his original plan, would’ve electronically filed it.
@dodgersmom I’m not sure what exactly a balance due means, do you mean like a balance due from last year’s tax cycle? Because he hasn’t filed for x years so I’m sure he owes quite a bit and it probably would’ve been a much harder process if he thought he had to pay all of that right now.
No, the only thing he’d owe with this return are taxes for 2014, not for prior years. But his past due taxes will not impact your eligibility for aid.
As for his not filing . . . well, that’s on him, not you. He sent it to you and told you he was going to file it. You can’t be responsible for what he does with it at this point.
If he signed it, the form is his declaration of what he earned in 2014, and that’s what the colleges want. If they decide later that they want verification that it was filed . . . well, you’ll deal with that then. At that point, you’ll know whether or not you’ve been admitted, and if he knows there’s a $50k financial aid award hanging in the balance, maybe he’ll be more willing to file the return.
I agree with dodgersmom - you should be good to go.
@dodgersmom @OHMomof2 That makes sense I guess I won’t worry about whether he actually filed or not until I know if I’m getting into one of the two schools.
Actually, no need to worry unless the school both (1) admits you and (2) asks for verification of filing. The school may or may not ever request such verification. So you can relax for a while . . .