Huge “kerfluffle”? How. Completing the fafsa has become easier and easier. It now uses prior prior tax return information. In addition, you can link that tax return to the FAFSA using the IRS data retrieval tool and the infomfrom the tax return pops right onto your fafsa form. You do need to get your asset values as of the day of filing …but that is an online look see!
The only complications are if your family owns a business. But even that isn’t hard…since the prior prior return is used.
In my opinion, the FAFSA is not a “kerfluffle” to complete!
Back when I was in undergrad, you had to use the prior year’s returns, so my parents would have to file over a month earlier to meet the early March deadline. This was especially hard on my mom since she always files her taxes on her own by mail.
Mom can’t use a computer, so Dad wanted to file the FAFSA online, but Mom wanted to file the paper version. I had to go back and forth between them for a week to get them to agree on a type.
We agree to do the online version since it’s faster, but only if I help Mom because she’s not computer literate. I need Mom’s tax returns to help her, but she doesn’t want me (or Dad) to see them, so she starts trying to convince us to classify her as an absent parent. Takes me a while to confirm with my school that parents who play an active role in their kids’ lives can’t be considered absent (I have to show her all of the paperwork to be considered absent before she gives up), so Mom takes even more time to get me her salary and SSN written on a slip of paper, after making me promise to burn it and not show it to Dad.
Dad also doesn’t want me to see his tax returns and how much he makes, so he makes us wait until he has time to fill in his information on his own. This takes two weeks, he’s a busy man. We barely got it in before the Cal Grant deadline.
Two years later, Dad starts up about why I don’t file the FAFSA, we may qualify for free money. I say okay, give me your SSN so I can file it this year. After a week of avoiding that request, he finally tells me to just forget it.
Some parents really don’t want to do what the FAFSA requires. I still am not sure why my parents acted the way they did, and I’d rather not ask. It’s not just high income families either, a friend with low income has a hard time getting his father to help him file it even they though they need it to get full tuition, the full Pell, and a stipend every year.
I gladly file the FAFSA for our state grant. And I also do all of our tax returns for (almost) free.
@Russug, your parents might also have missed out on an education tax credit by filing their tax return separately. Seems like they might have qualified income wise.
But if they were separated or divorced and didn’t live in the same home, then the FAFSA would have only required the information of the parent you lived with more.
@mommdc when my kids applied to college…divorced and separated parents living in the same home did NOT have to report both incomes. That changed a few years ago…I don’t remember exactly when.
It is very possible,that his parents both did NOT have to report both incomes on the fafsa even if they were living in the same home.
He also mentioned using prior year info…and that didmcreate the jeedmto update, and estimate,etc.
That is no longer the case with the use of prior prior.
In 2011, I believe only one parent would have reported if the parents were not married…unless the state was a common law state and they fulfilled the common law marriage guidelines.