<p>So I filled out the Profile a long time ago and sent out my business/farm supplements in february to collegeboard.. and I also sent my parents' 2004 taxes to collegeboard.. was i supposed to send them to the colleges or collegeboard? because washington and lee specify in a letter for me to send them copies of my parents' tax return, but i didnt do that for any other colleges... was i supposed to?? eek.</p>
<p>The business/farm supplement says at the very top in bold letters to send it to the individual college requesting it.</p>
<p>The PROFILE goes through Collegeboard to the colleges. Tax returns need to be sent to each college that requests them (with student's name and SSN clearly printed at the top of each page), as do W-2s. There are varying requirements depending on what college you applied to, though; if you applied to PROFILE online, it should give you a guide on the overview as to which colleges expect which documents.</p>
<p>Well, for instance, the stanford financial aid timeline says:</p>
<p>April 1, 2005 Submit parent 2004 federal income tax returns with W-2 forms to IDOC </p>
<p>does that means submit copies of income tax to collegeboard and they will send it out to your schools.. ?</p>
<p>The CollegeBoard IDOC service will send you a letter with a coversheet if a school has requested those forms through their service.</p>
<p>We had that extra stuff to do for Stanford, too, and, at least in our case, it was to be sent to the College Board, not directly to Stanford.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, however, we also had to send tax returns to Oberlin, but those were sent directly to the college. (But now I can't even remember is Oberlin uses the CSS Profile, or just FAFSA. Too many colleges, too many forms!)</p>
<p>So think about it this way. There are three distinct groups of forms:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>FAFSA -- Federal Application, required by all schools, paper or online application, submit once annually, free (to use, paid for by your taxes - smiles).</p></li>
<li><p>CSS Profile -- Required by many schools, online application, submitted once annually, pay per school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>2a. Non-custodial Parent Profile -- If a colleges chooses, they can use this new service which allows non-custodial parents to complete their own online version of the Profile. Non-cust parent pays the equivalent of one college fee for this service (regardless of the number of colleges reported).</p>
<ol>
<li> Tax returns (optional to schools) and Business/Farm Supplements (optional to schools) -- Some colleges will want this stuff and some won't. Some will have you send it to them directly, and some (a much smaller number) are using a combined service called IDOC to collect them (so that YOU, ideally, only have to do this once for all of the IDOC colleges).<br></li>
</ol>
<p>You could, therefore, wind up needing to send your tax information directly to the colleges who do not use IDOC and only once for all colleges using IDOC.</p>
<p>Best bet? Ask the colleges, go to their web page, and make a chart of who needs what...</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that colleges change their procedures annually and may have different rules for upperclass students than for Freshmen, so never assume this year's process applies to next year as well.</p>