<p>I am working on an appeal for FA. I think I found a mistake I made on the SSS form.</p>
<p>Where do you enter real estate taxes paid? We pay almost $9000 a year directly to our town for real estate taxes in 2008 and I don't think I ever entered that anywhere. I wonder if they assume it's part of your mortgage you pay to the bank? We have a deal with our bank not to escrow our taxes and instead pay them directly to our town </p>
<p>Where did you enter your real estate taxes? </p>
<p>Also , we paid $3800 for our daughter to attend a Waldorf School in 08 and we never wrote that anywhere. She only went for part of the year since it wasn't a good fit so we forgot about it. </p>
<p>Would these things add up to us getting 12800 in aid if we had put them in?</p>
<p>PA-C, why bother? Just write a letter to the school and explain your situation, and put the amount of real estate tax you pay on a separate line in bold. That should have their attention.</p>
<p>As to the tuition you paid, you can do the same thing. But if you really need to put both expenses in the PFS, I think it should go to the “extraordinary expense” (something like that) and explain in the free text field at the end of the form.</p>
<p>The tuition that you paid probably won’t matter if you’re not paying it next year. If you will be paying tuition for your daughter, then yes, include that as well.</p>
<p>I think that it is certainly money that is NOT available for tuition, especially since it will only go up every year. It is a recurring expense. Come to think of it, I don’t remember entering that informaton either. I wonder why they don’t include a line for property taxes? They have a copy of your 1040 and real estate taxes are itemized on schedule (is it C?). Maybe they look at that? I don’t know. I would definately bring it to their attention though. Perhaps a call to the FA office asking, (in a very friendly way) if they pull that information off of the returns. Or if they consider those expenses.</p>
<p>They do have a line for monthly mortgage payments- I think that most people escrow their taxes so it gets rolled into that line- but we don’t escrow our taxes so we are a somewhat unique situation I think.</p>
<p>If you itemize deductions on your taxes, wouldn’t it be on your federal tax form? ($9,000 in property taxes? Is it a big house, or just a very expensive town?) All of the schools that we dealt with worked right off of the tax forms, not so much the SSS.</p>
<p>PA-C- wow- that is just amazing. I thought I lived in an expensive New England state/town and our property taxes are half of that. We do have a state income tax though. I had no idea that NH property taxes were that high. The things we learn on CC!</p>
<p>car registration is also very expensive in NH and is based on what your car is worth. They just don’t call it a tax but they get you one way or another!</p>
<p>I had called SSS about this and they said to include property tax with mortgage amount. For school for your D, if you are paying again in the upcoming year, it is eligible as well, you would put in under the page with her information. Some schools told me they do their own calculations, others use only the SSS amount so it is worth mentionning to the schools you are interested in.</p>
<p>PA-C…you don’t send in the 1040 to SSS, though. The schools just use the 1040 to verify income numbers. You should really let them know about that tax amount. Could make a difference for you!</p>
<p>Our house is half the size of PA-C’s and still $4000 in taxes. Yes, expensive state tax-wise! Even our older cars are expensive to register.</p>
<p>Loosely quoted: “After reviewing the information you sent us prior to and after 3/10 we still feel you don’t meet our criteria for receiving FA.” The thing I still don’t understand is that when you put the number of people in our family and the amount we earn into their fa estimator on their website it says that we could expect to pay $20-$25,000 per year. Yet we are coming out as FP. I don’t know why… </p>
<p>At least we know we tried and won’t have to wonder what would have happened if we applied/appealed.</p>