<p>I worked as an “independent contractor” for a company for three years when I shouldn’t have. The IRS didn’t care about ME at all, but they investigated my employer, whose bookkeeper actually asked med to LIE about our arrangement! Thank goodness the IRS never contacted me. So even though I wasn’t in the wrong, it was nervewracking.</p>
<p>Didn’t the student say she was working something like 20 hours a week? Depending on her hourly wage, this actually COULD affect a need based aid calculation.</p>
<p>It could definitely have some impact, sure, but I would be surprised if it was a major difference…</p>
<p>Her hourly wage is $8 an hour. I’d be surprised if this job was the reason she lost a lot of aid. Student income is assessed at a much higher rate than parental income, but students are also granted an exemption for the first $6260 of income each year. If she started working in Spring of last year and has been working 20 hours a week regularly up until December 31st, her annual income would be somewhere around $8000 a year. That will have an impact on aid but it’s hard to say that it would be a lot after the exemption, especially since we don’t know how much the parents are making. </p>
<p>(For all we know they make so much money that they wouldn’t qualify for aid even if the kid didn’t have a job, or they might be so low income that even with the kid’s job their EFC is still relatively low). </p>
<p>There is a chance of course that the extra $1000 of income added to EFC will be what nudges the EFC just outside of Pell eligibility range or something, but honestly that’s not something that I would spend time worrying too much about that. The priority here should be to get the filing situation squared away so that the student doesn’t endanger their eligibility for financial aid. It’s far better to have a somewhat higher EFC than you want than to take the risk of getting busted for writing something false on either a tax form or a financial aid form.</p>