
- What Tax Info Do You Need For Fafsa
- Financial Aid — The Country School
- A Quick Guide To How The Fafsa Works
- Financial Aid Guidance For Divorced Or Separated Families
- A Visual Guide To Understanding Fafsa
- College Financial Aid For 2024: Fafsa Delay Could Be Worse With Government Shutdown
- Easy Steps For Parents Completing The 2023–24 Fafsa® Form
What Tax Info Do You Need For Fafsa – This article covers the 2023-2024 FAFSA® form. The 2024-2025 FAFSA form will be available in December 2023, not October 1. Watch our video about FAFSA updates for 2024-25.
It’s easier to complete the FAFSA if you gather everything you need in advance. Here are some items to help you complete it.
What Tax Info Do You Need For Fafsa
If you haven’t already done so, create an FSA ID, which is a username and password for your account. An FSA ID is a digital legal signature that allows you to complete and update your FAFSA form, so create your own and keep it in a safe place. Parents of dependent students will need to use their own FSA ID to complete the FAFSA process.
Financial Aid — The Country School
We recommend that you create an account in advance – even before you are ready to complete the FAFSA form. This extra step helps avoid delays in the process, especially since it can take up to three days before you can use your FSA ID.
Important: Do not create an FSA ID on behalf of someone else. This also applies to parents. A parent should not create an FSA ID for their children, and a student should not create an FSA ID for their parents. This may cause problems with signing and submitting the FAFSA form and lead to delays in financial aid awards. (Plus, it’s against the rules.)
You can find your Social Security Number (SSN) on your Social Security card. If you don’t have access to it or don’t know where it is located, you can request a new or replacement SSN card from the Social Security Administration.
If you are not a U.S. citizen but meet other eligibility criteria for federal student aid as an eligible alien, you will also need your alien registration number. Both parents and students need this information for the FAFSA form.
A Quick Guide To How The Fafsa Works
You must enter your driver’s license on the FAFSA form. If you don’t have a driving license, don’t worry about this step.
On the 2023-2024 FAFSA, you (and your parents, if you are a dependent student) will report your 2021 income.
Since you likely filed your 2021 tax return before the FAFSA was available, you may be eligible to immediately transfer your tax information to the FAFSA using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT).
IRS DRT is the fastest and most accurate way to enter tax return information on your FAFSA form. To address security and privacy concerns related to IRS DRT, tax return information submitted from the IRS will not be displayed on fafsa.gov. Instead, you will see “Transferred from the IRS” in the appropriate fields on fafsa.gov.
Financial Aid Guidance For Divorced Or Separated Families
You cannot use your 2022 tax information. We understand that for some families, your 2021 income does not accurately reflect your current financial situation. If you have experienced a drop in income since the 2021 tax year, complete the FAFSA with your 2021 tax information. Then contact the school you plan to attend to explain and document the change in income. School officials can evaluate your situation and, if warranted, adjust the FAFSA form.
FAFSA questions about untaxed income such as child support, interest income, and non-educational veterans benefits may apply to you. You will provide 2021 tax or calendar year information on the 2023-24 FAFSA when you ask these questions. Find details about untaxed parent income and untaxed student income.
This section includes your savings and checking account balances, as well as the value of investments such as stocks, bonds, and real estate (excluding your primary residence). Instead of reporting, report current amounts as of the date you sign your FAFSA form for your 2021 tax year amounts.
Note: A common FAFSA error is misreporting the value of investments. Carefully review what is and is not considered a reasonable investment for students and parents to make sure you are not over- or under-reporting. You may be surprised by what can (and cannot) be ruled out.
Changes To The Fafsa: Important Information To Know
Even if your chance of getting accepted to a college is slim, list the school on your FAFSA form. You can always remove a school later if you decide not to apply, but if you wait to add a school, you could lose your financial aid.
The schools you list on the FAFSA form will automatically receive your FAFSA results electronically. They will use your FAFSA information to determine the type and amount of financial aid you may receive.
If you add a school to your FAFSA and later decide not to apply to that school, no problem! The school probably won’t offer you help until you’re accepted anyway.

You can list up to 10 schools at a time on your FAFSA. Find out what you can do if you’re applying to more than 10 schools.
How To Apply For Fafsa 2022 2023: Deadlines, Tips & Faqs
Tip: Some states require schools to be listed in a specific order to be considered for state aid. For example, you may need to list a state school first. Find out if your state has requirements for the order you list schools on your FAFSA form. Schedule 1 is an IRS tax form. You’ll need this information after completing the FAFSA, and it will help determine your financial aid.
The first step to qualifying for financial aid is to complete the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
You report your family income on the FAFSA, which is used to determine how much financial aid you may qualify for.
One important piece of the income puzzle is Schedule 1, the IRS form where taxpayers report types of non-wage income such as rental income and capital gains.
A Visual Guide To Understanding Fafsa
So if you’re getting ready to file the FAFSA, read on to learn what’s on Schedule 1, how to report it on the FAFSA, and how it could affect your chance of getting the financial aid you need.
Even if you’re still in school and haven’t filed a tax return, there’s a good chance your parent or guardian will. Form 1040 is the official form the IRS uses to file tax returns.
While the most common types of income (wages, interest, dividends, and more) are reported on Form 1040, some are not.
Schedule 1 is an additional form used to report certain types of income that are not included on Form 1040.
College Financial Aid For 2024: Fafsa Delay Could Be Worse With Government Shutdown
Schedule 1 is also used to report certain income adjustments that reduce your taxable income. Some of the income and adjustments included on Schedule 1, along with information included in the rest of your tax return, may be used to determine whether you (the applicant) qualify for financial aid (and how much you will receive).
When you complete the FAFSA form, you will find 2 questions related to Schedule 1. The first asks if your parents completed Schedule 1 and the second asks if you did.
Let’s assume you answered yes to any of these questions. In this case, you will need to provide additional information about your or your family’s income from non-popular sources. The information you provide will be used to adjust the income your school uses to calculate your expected family contribution to school costs.
In past years, the FAFSA asked families what income tax form they used to file their annual tax returns. However, with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Congress got rid of two tax return forms – Form 1040A and Form 1040EZ.
Easy Steps For Parents Completing The 2023–24 Fafsa® Form
Since then, the FAFSA has used the questions on Schedule 1 to determine what income and deductions your family may have that are important for determining financial aid but were not included elsewhere on your tax return.
The FAFSA is not interested in all of the income and deductions you may claim on your Schedule 1. Therefore, the FAFSA questions clarify what types of income would require reporting on your Schedule 1.
Now it’s worth asking why the FAFSA can’t automatically pull your Schedule 1 along with the rest of your tax return.
The answer is that only some of the information you can report on Schedule 1 needs to be reported on FAFSA. So you may have completed Schedule 1 to report your student loan interest deduction. But the FAFSA excludes this adjustment for your FAFSA.
How To Fill Out The Fafsa
The FAFSA only needs to download your Schedule 1 if you have completed one of the fields that do not have an exception. And if you filled out a field that is currently an exception for FAFSA purposes, those files will be masked when FAFSA downloads your IRS forms.
This question is also important because it helps the FAFSA determine whether you can skip certain questions later on the form.
Schedule 1 allows taxpayers to report various types of income and income adjustments that they do not report on their federal income tax return form. There are 19 different types of income and adjustments you can report on Schedule 1, but not all of them are relevant to the FAFSA.
Here are the types of income and adjustments that require reporting on Schedule 1 on the FAFSA:
Fafsa Form Changes For The 2024 25 Award Year
FAFSA questions 35 and 82 ask whether you or your parents have filed (or plan to file) Schedule 1 on your tax return. It is important to read the instructions for these questions carefully because the answers may not be as clear as they seem.
For both questions, it is possible that you submitted Schedule 1 but still answered “no”. This happens because some sections of the form are disabled for FAFSA purposes. If you completed these sections of the form and not others, you would answer that you did not complete the form at all.
Question 35 of the 2021 FAFSA reads: “Do you (or intend to) file Schedule 1 on your 2021 tax return?”
You should answer “No” to question 35 if you have not filed Schedule 1. However, you should also answer “No” if you have filed Schedule 1, but only to report any of the following income and adjustments:
How Might The Fafsa Simplification Act Affect You
If you filed Schedule 1 and reported income or adjustments that fell outside the 6 exceptions, you should respond