Princeton Financial Aid form?

Paying for College
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<p>Hi, on the Princeton Financial Aid form it asks for Adjusted gross income and later it asks for individual parent incomes. On the side, it clarifies "Income earned by individual parents refers to wages, salary and other earnings from work. We ask for this information separated out from AGI so that social security taxes (FICA) can be calculated. List the full amount before tax-deferred deductions – this gives you the highest tax allowance in our calculations."</p>

<p>What exactly does "separated out" mean? Is the AGI (adjusted gross income) supposed to include the incomes I list for each parent or should it exclude the values? I don't want my total income numbers to double so I could really use some help. Thank you!</p>

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<p>The AGI includes both of the parents work earnings. For the individual question it wants how much in work earnings each parent contributed to the AGI. As the explanation said, this is only to determine how much in FICA was taken out of their wages. That benefits you as it reduces the amount of income available to be used for college. The individual amounts won’t be added to AGI again.</p>

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<p>Prnceton want to know full income from work as would be reported in box 5 on W2 form for each parent independently. The problem is that they ask about income in 2014 and 2015 that will have to be estimated at this point. You should ask your parents for help.Usually this amount equals yearly salary minus yearly health insurance payments and minus other pre-tax benefits like FSA, Child care plan, etc. Do not subtract 401K contributions. Your parents will have to find their most recent paystubs and try to figure this out. To fully complete the form they will have to estimate AGI and other things on the form. This is not a trivial task, especially if they own a business/self-employed. You really need an adult to handle this and these estimations better be precise.</p>

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<p>@CCDD14, why wouldn’t pre-tax 401k contributions be subtracted out of an estimate for what will be in box 5 of the W-2? They won’t be there on the actual W-2. I would expect a different question to ask for the amount of pre-tax 401k contributions so they can be added back in to available income later.</p>

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<p>@annoyingdad - because we pay FICA taxes on 401K contributions. They will be subtracted in box 1 but will not be subtracted in box 5.
<a href=“Topic No. 424, 401(k) Plans | Internal Revenue Service”>http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc424.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;