<p>How do retirement accounts under the students name get reported on the css profie? as assets or protected?</p>
<p>How does the capital accrued each hear get factored into the equation? as income and thus is part of the $6k buffer?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>Balances in retirement accounts are
not reported on the FAFSA. You will indicate any pretax contributions made in 2012 on the FAFSA. There is a line item for that. Those contributions are added back in as income when the EFC is calculated.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that even though you don’t pay taxes on withdrawals from Roth Iras since the contributions are made after taxes, they are still counted as income for FAFSA/CSS purposes since the Roth Iras are treated the same way as other tax deferred accounts in terms of assets. So an gains in terms of interest, dividends, realized/ unrealized are not reported as income for financial aid purposes, because, again, the accounts are treated the same as the tax deferred Iras and thus protected.</p>