Why did my EFC change?

Paying for College
1

When I submitted my FAFSA in February, my EFC was 5,138. At the time, my mom wasn’t eligible to use the IRS data retrieval tool since she had completed her taxes only a week before. We just manually put in the amount she made in 2015 and taxes paid. A month later, the college I will be attending sent me a letter saying I had to complete a dependent verification form, send my student W-2 and my mom’s parent tax return transcript.

I mailed the 3 documents to the college about a week and a half ago. Today I got an email from the FAFSA website saying “FAFSA Correction was made by a Financial Aid Administrator (FAA) at your school”. I checked my SAR report and my EFC had increased to 6,354 (now I’m no longer eligible for a small $650 pell grant anymore). What gives?? The income and taxes paid that we entered manually on the FAFSA was exactly the same as the numbers on the tax return transcript. Does this normally happen when someone is chosen to fill out the verification form?

2

Pull up the new SAR and compare line by line to see what changed. The colleges are Required to correct any errors that they find (but they are also known to make some honest errors, too).

3

^I just re-read the SAR together with my mom and we realized the error. It was my moms fault, she gave me the wrong amount she paid for taxes. She was way off (by almost $6,000)

4

Glad you were able to figure this out, even at the cost of some Pell grant. Hopefully the school is still affordable. Good luck.

5

If you had used the IRS data retrieval tool when it became available it would have brought the correct income and tax paid numbers over from her tax return.

It can be complicated on the tax return if you have a tax calculated from income after deductions but then have credits reducing the tax actually paid. I think the FAFSA specifies which line on the particular tax return form to use.