Work study and student income protection allowance

Paying for College
1

<p>I understand that the first $2500 a student earns doesn't count against his or her EFC for that tax year. Does work study count against this total, or can a student with $2500 of work study make $5000 ($2500 work study $2500 over the summer) before their EFC is affected?</p>

<p>Thanks
-Ben</p>

2

<p>For FAFSA The first $3080 of a dependent student's income is protected income (plus a little more for SS taxes). Federal WS earnings do not count against you for the EFC. When you do FAFSA the WS earnings will be included in your AGI (they are taxable) but you also enter them in one of the worksheets (C I think?) and they are deducted from your AGI by the EFC formula.</p>

3

<p>Yes- it's worksheet C.</p>

4

<p>swimcatsmom, or anyone else that knows, where did you get that information? My dad wants the source of the info just to be 100% sure.</p>

5

<p>There is an EFC formula for 2008-2009 here
<a href="http://ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/attachments/0809EFCFormulaGuide.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/attachments/0809EFCFormulaGuide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The dependent student part of the formula is on page 10
Items from worksheet C (includes work study and scholarship/grant money included in the student AGI) are deducted from AGI in line34
Income protection is line 39</p>

6

<p>ok,
thank you very much :)</p>

7

<p>you're welcome</p>

8

<p>to address the work study part of the question, I believe that work study is NOT counted as income when determining the next years aid. So, to give a really simple example, if you work at an on campus work-study job and earn 2,000.00, that won't be counted on your following years FAFSA, but if you take a job at McDonalds and earn 2,000.00, that WILL be added to your income that you report on the FAFSA. </p>

<p>If that's incorrect, can someone please let me know, because that means I'm laboring under a false assumption....</p>

9

<p>jude - you are correct. Work Study is taxable so is included on your AGI from your tax return (if you do one) but you also enter it on FAFSA worksheet C and it is deducted from your AGI by the EFC formula.</p>