The FAFSA is the student’s form. The aid that the student receives is the student’s aid (not the parents’ unless the parent chooses to take out plus loans) and bills from the school go to the student. So yes, the FAFSA is the student’s form even though, yes, the parent’s information is required for some (most?) students.
Personally, I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all.
Believe it or not, many 18 year olds (and 17 year olds) are able to- and do- fill out the FAFSA. Almost all the low income students I knew, myself included, just had their parents turn over financial documents to them. No one ever encountered any issues. If something happened to our FAFSAs, we were alerted and then would call the school and figure out what happened. But I guess you have a little more motivation when a change in the FAFSA is likely the difference between you going to school and not. shrug
^ Sure if your parents have only W2 income and no assets beyond a checking account, its not that difficult. It also only takes an hour or less for HR Block to do your taxes or perhaps for you to do them yourself.
I would think it would take a tax professional a lot longer to do Op’s return. I know it takes our accountant awhile.
It does not sound like Op is in a simple situation given all the different type of income she and H have. The various posters on here have at times misunderstood the corporate structure that is the source for her income.
As for being able to do your FAFSA, some kids are fortunate that their parents can help. Others not so much. When I was 18 I was certainly capable of filling out the forms but would I have done them correctly? I doubt it considering I screwed something minor up recently so the school (correctly) corrected it.
Plus I have no desire to just “turn over” my forms to my kid. It is none of his/her business what we earn or save. While our kids have a general idea, there is no reason they need to know. Especially as we have several children and non W2 income so even if they knew to the penny, it would not tell them what a college will want them to pay. We have explained to our next kid the finances that are available and the type of college he or she will need to apply to.
I find this situation ridiculous for another reason, everyone talks about it being the kid’s FAFSA and the kid’s obligation however, said kid can only take out a minimal amount of loans a year ($5500 or whatever does not matter), against his $25,000 in state or $65,000 out of state COA. Every kid who comes on this forum is reminded that without his parents cooperation he cannot afford anything more than a free ride or CC.
YES parents have no legal obligation to pay for college and some parents cut the kid loose. At that point, other than an independent student (good luck proving), or full merit free rides which are few, said kid will not get any aid if his or her parents refuse to provide their financial information whether they earn $0 or $150,000. Since very few kids have assets in their own names of $80,000 or whatever it would take to finance an in state education, it really is the parents either contributing or co signing the loans or providing the documentation so the kid can get full need someplace if income is low enough. Without the parents cooperation, funding or co signing, most kids get nothing so to call this only the kid’s FAFSA?!
It is the kid’s FAFSA because unlike other government entitlement programs, two siblings may not be eligible for the same amount of aid. Sibling A has a 350K savings account funded by a dead grandma. Sibling B has no college account. Do you want everyone in this family eligible for YOUR tax dollars just to make the nomenclature more family friendly?
Similarly, in the case of blended families- Mom and Dad may be the head of household, but depending on the status of the bio-parents, non-custodial parents and their spouses, different kids in the family unit are eligible for differing amounts of aid.
I for one am in favor of this approach. This is a federal entitlement program, and we all have a vested interest in making sure that EACH KID gets the funds to which he or she qualifies for. Not that an entire family fills out a FAFSA based on parental assets, and then funnels the dough to whichever kid is next in line.
Fill out the form however you wish. But to migrate this from a program to aid specific kids in specific circumstances to a family free-for-all is asking for massive fraud.
I understand it is an S Corp, not a partnership However, fafsa/college may not. S Corp is taxed much like a PS (pass thru of income/expense). Both give K1s to shareholders. However, the S Corp pays fica, whereas for a partnership, that would be self employment income/tax.
Perhaps they are confusing the 2 and imputing as though you paid self employment taxes on all of your S Corp K1 earnings.
I think you missed my point. Where does another sibling come into play? Where does a trust fund come in? I was speaking about an individual kid’s FAFSA and that kid requiring the support of the parent to complete it.
Op never mentioned her S having a trust fund, or that Op was divorced, in fact it sounds like her H is the biological father of her S. The focus of this thread is a correction to FAFSA made by a school,that may be incorrect, when there is a complicated financial situation related to how income is earned by two biological parents who are married to each other.
My point was that it is ridiculous that a parent signing the FAFSA no longer has access to it once it is filed so cannot help his or her child with any questions that come up as a result of that filing unless it occurs to that child to ask for help. I was responding to a poster that mentioned she as a student had no problem doing the FAFSA and did not need her parent’s help beyond their income and asset information. In a W2 sitation with little or no assets, it is relatively easy, in Op’s it is not.
I never said it should be a family but rather that most students under 24 who do not earn full merit or choose to go to CC will need parental cooperation to go to college, even if it is just having access to parental income and asset information or co signing a loan. Whether an only child or one of 10! Therefore, if the parent has to cooperate in the process, and sign the forms, why is the parent shut out of the process after the forms are signed? Yes for unusual situations there should be an opt out for the student (and the parent) but for most situations the parent should have full access since the parent, mostly, is either paying or is on the hook for the loans or it is the parent income that is being relied on for full need.
I know I’m resurrecting an old thread, but I’m wondering @Sweetbeet how this ended up, as I’m now in a similarish situation. I received notice yesterday that a change was made to the FAFSA by a school D applied to (but hasn’t heard from yet). I couldn’t find the change, so I called the FAFSA helpline and the person there told me the school and that they’d changed the amount we’d paid in taxes last year. That line was directly imported from the IRS, so it was disconcerting to say the least and the helpline guy advised me to follow up with the school. The first person I spoke to there thought it was very odd as well and tracked down which FA counselor made the actual change, but that person hasn’t returned my call or email request for an explanation. The change lowered our EFC by nearly $3000, so it would be a welcome change, but I don’t think it’s a correct change. We don’t even know if D will be admitted, and the EFC for this school was unrealistic in the first place, so I’m thinking at this point I just let it drop as in all likelihood it’s a moot point.
I didn’t participate in this thread first time around, but I’ll interject now.
Something similar happened to us a few years ago. We had hired a professional financial aid consultant to help us with our forms and appeal (complicated financial situation). One college made a change to Fafsa that made no sense. Before contacting the school, we contacted our very knowledgable F/A consultant. He said that schools can do WHATEVER THEY WANT to the Fafsa to make it come out so that the student gets more aid. This is a quote from him: “If you or I were to do what the school did, it would be fraud. But the school is allowed to make any changes they want.”
The F/A consultant was wrong. Schools can do what they want … as long as what they do is within the regulations and their own policies. And if it is professional judgment, it must still be within guidelines and internal policies … and must be documented properly.
That said, a school could do whatever it wants, but if it gets caught doing the wrong thing (in an audit or a program review), it has to fix what it did wrong. If the school has to remove an improper award (such as a Pell grant), the school could require the student to repay it (within any allowable time limits) or could cover it with their own funds, if they do that.
Usually, the changes a school makes are due to something allowable - but schools do make mistakes.
Thanks @brantly. That makes me feel a little better. It’s a CSS school, so it made no sense to me why they’d even mess with the FAFSA, yet alone change a number imported from the IRS. I did get a response from someone at the school that basically said it’s their professional judgment. We’re well above the threshold for something like a Pell grant or subsidized loans. This would only affect how much institutional aid we’d receive.
We had a FAFSA correction made by DD’s college one year. I have no idea what it was…I never got that far. We received an email saying the fafsa had been changed (we did not use the IRS DRT…this was between 2006-2009).
We also got a love note from the college telling us DD was not going to receive her scholarship…which was a little odd. Anyway, I called. Turns out…they made a mistake on their end. I didn’t even ask what it was.
The next day we got another email saying the fafsa had been changed (again), and another love note from the university apologizing for the mix up.
Well, yeah. I’m sure whatever they did was permitted FOR THEM to do. But there would be no way in he** that my family could have done what they did. They said it was part of their professional judgment review after we appealed.
@SuburbanMom – did you by any chance pay a large amount in state income taxes, perhaps disproportionate to your income? I’m a little fuzzy on the details because it was a long time ago, but the year before the tax year that counted for FAFSA, I had a large capital gain due to the sale of family owned property that I had inherited a share in. So I had to pay a big chunk of money in taxes. So the next year when I filed – the tax year that counted for FAFSA - I took a deduction for all of those state taxes on my schedule A (itemized deductions) – as I should have.
My daughter’s college also did something similar, changed the FAFSA probably by making the change on the taxes paid line I contacted them and they explained what they had done and why. Basically they saw I had paid a whole bunch of taxes and they were giving me credit for it, but there isn’t an “other” line on the FAFSA, so they made corrections to the nearest thing.
Anyway, it sounds like something similar may have happened in your case.
@calmom - We actually had a refund from 2014 that was paid to us in 2015 that had to be put on our 2015 taxes. I could probably drive myself crazy trying to figure this out - for a school we don’t even know if D will be admitted to. The correction doesn’t seem right, but neither does spending a lot of time and effort on getting to the bottom of it.