In just a few weeks, students will be moving into dorm rooms across the country. The new school year is officially beginning!
The first few days of college are often a blur of forms, registrations – and more forms. One of the most popular – and yet confusing – forms is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). While the deadline for FAFSA submissions might have passed (depending on your state and your school), it’s not unusual for students to have to complete additional requests for information to supplement the FAFSA.
FAFSA requests can be tricky because students (and sometimes, parents) can’t always easily access their tax information for purposes of completing the form. Even then, figuring out what goes where can be complicated.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a free service, the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, which automatically transfers tax data from a taxpayer’s federal tax return directly to a FAFSA form. It has been available since the 2009-10 school year.
Here’s how it works. On the FAFSA, you must report financial information, including bank balances and information from your tax forms. That information is from the tax year prior to the academic year: so, if you are filling out the FAFSA for the coming school year (2012-2013), you will use your 2011 tax year information (if you’re still on extension, you can estimate those amounts).
If you complete the FAFSA online and you meet the eligibility criteria, you can use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool. The tool takes you to the IRS website, where you’ll need to log in by providing your name and other information exactly as you provided it on your tax return. When you pop back to the FAFSA site, the fields on the form will be populated with your tax information and marked “Transferred from the IRS.”
To be eligible, you must have filed a federal 2011 tax return using any status other than married filing separately and your marital status must not have changed since December 31, 2011. You must not have amended your return. You must have a valid Social Security Number (and not an ITIN) and have not filed a Puerto Rican or other foreign tax return. Finally, you must also have a Federal Student Aid PIN or apply for one through the FAFSA application process.
If you’re not eligible to use the tool and still need your tax info, you can get an official transcript from the IRS. You can get your transcript online, by calling the IRS toll-free at 1-800-908-9946 or by using a federal form 4506-T (downloads as a pdf).
And yes, all of this information still applies if you’re relying on your parents’ financial and tax information to complete the form.
Once that’s over, all that’s left is to hit the books! Good luck!
Does the IRS data retrieval tool report “checking account balances” as part of the data transfer?
If yes, where did they get his data? From the elctronic transfer of a refund?
Also if yes, where is it stipulated that the IRS data retrieval tool will report current bank balances automatically? I have not seen this information communicated.