<p>So, if your parents haven't done taxes yet, do you put down estimates? Can I go back and change it later? Also, I don't know where to put my own taxes. I made a little over $2000 working as a cashier, but I don't know where to put any of that.</p>
<p>Thank You!</p>
<p>Also what is the difference between adjusted gross income and amount earned from working “Wages, tips, etc.”</p>
<p>How far have you actually gone on the FAFSA? Yes, you can use estimates (should be easy if you have the last pay check stub from 2011) for parents and yourself. Just make sure your status is “will file”… which means the numbers are estimates. </p>
<p>After you have entered your parents information, you will then be asked for your own information. </p>
<p>Look at the 2010 or 2011 tax forms, as FAFSA tells you which lines to refer to which will answer your question about adjusted gross and wages, etc. The wages, etc is a gross (before adjustments) number. AGI = adjusted gross which will be the number upon which is used to determine your federal tax liability.</p>
<p>You do need to get hold of last year’s tax returns plus W-2s (wages & tips income report) from this year. The FAFSA income questions refer to specific lines on the tax forms, as others have pointed out. There’s a choice of “will file” or “have filed” 2011 taxes.</p>
<p>The FAFSA instructions will refer to specific line numbers for AGI, as crazymonster says. When it’s asking for income from work, that number is only wages (not interest/dividend income, capital gains/losses or any of the other items that are also included in AGI) so they may or may not be the same number. The reason it’s asking for wages separately is to calculate allowances for certain employment expenses such as SS/Medicare taxes.</p>
<p>The first section of FAFSA will ask for general info, then it will ask about the students income and assets. Your wage info goes in this section. The next section will ask questions about your parents’ income and assets. If you have questions, the complete line-by-line instructions are available at the link below but FAFSA uses skip logic so you will only see the questions that pertain to your situation. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>[Completing</a> the FAFSA: Financial Aid from the U.S. Department of Education](<a href=“http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/completing_fafsa/index.html]Completing”>http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/completing_fafsa/index.html)</p>