Household Form

Due to the new conditions that may not trigger the Household Section from appearing, we are updating the Household Form name to Independent/Dependent Verification Form to alleviate any confusion for scenarios where verifying household members is not required.

Below are the following changes made to the 2018-2019 Verification Forms.

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The Household Section will appear if at least one of these conditions is true:

• The student’s/parents’ marital status and number of members in the household do not correlate with the regulations for not requiring the section

  • For a dependent student, the household size reported is two with a single, divorced, separated, or widowed parent or is three with parents who are married or are unmarried and living together.

  • For an independent student, the number reported is two if he is married or one if he is single, divorced, separated, or widowed.

• The number in college is reported as more than one

• The student has an Automatic Zero EFC indicated

StudentForms will continue to review subsequent ISIRs as they are processed to determine if the forms need to be reopened based on these new requirements.

These conditions are referenced in GEN-17-05

Please note that StudentForms will have a switch to enable the household section for all students in 2018-2019, regardless of meeting the requirements to hide the section. If your school wants to always request this information, reach out to your CSM to ensure this section is required.

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The Amended Tax section for both students and parents are now being removed from the Verification Forms. In its place will be tasks to collect the tax return transcripts, based on dependency status and/or student’s/parents’ filing status.

With the removal of IRS Display Flag H (self-reports of amending taxes), the IRS Request Flag value 07 has taken its place as reporting amended taxes. Because this new flag value requires institutions to contact and verify the information, whether or not the student is selected for Verification, StudentForms has built tasks to handle the verification of amended taxes. 

These conditions are referenced in IFAP - Electronic Announcements

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The Student/Parent Tax Sections will continue to be hidden and not required if the Student/Parent IRS Request Flag = 02. In addition, if there is an 07 code (IRS data was transferred from IRS, but the IRS indicated that the student/parent filed an amended tax return), then the section will not appear.

For dependent students, the Tax section will not appear if an Automatic Zero EFC.

For dependent students, by default the student will not be required to provide documentation for not filing a tax return.

New conditional logic has been included to review subsequent ISIRs as they are processed to determine if the form needs to be reopened based a change of the request flag originally having an 02 or 07 code is no longer present on the most recent ISI.

These conditions are referenced in GEN-17-05

Please note that StudentForms will have the option to enable the dependent student’s documentation of non-filing to be required of all 2018-2019 students. If your school wants to always request this documentation, reach out to your CSM to ensure this documentation is required.

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We also have a handful of label and output changes coming based on feedback from our institutions.

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Additional Untaxed Information Web Form

We will be renaming this form to the 2018-2019 Independent/Dependent Untaxed Income and Benefits Form, as we are planning on breaking up the two sections into separate web forms to help resolve comment codes 400 and 401 (see below).

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Student Actionable Comment Codes 400 and 401

With the return of the IRS DRT, visibility of retrieved values has been removed from the students in order to prevent sensitive information from being shared and used to commit fraud.

Comment Codes 400 and 401 have been created to alert of discrepancies in information that needs to be resolved by the student/parents, who do not have access to view those values.

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Comment Code 400

Relating to the parents’ tax information provided through the IRS DRT, StudentForms will trigger a copy of the tax return transcript based on the parents’ filing status when one or more of these conditions applies:

• The parent’s adjusted gross income is less than or equal to zero and the combined income is greater than zero

• The parents’ additional financial information total calculated by CPS > parents’ adjusted gross income

  • The new 2018-2019 Parents' Additional Financial Information Form will be requested to capture financial information not captured on the tax return transcript

• The parents’ untaxed income total calculated by CPS >= parents’ adjusted gross income

  • The new 2018-2019 Parents' Untaxed Information Form will be requested to capture untaxed income not reported on the tax return transcript

If parents do not meet any of the above conditions, a notification will be presented to the school users during file review of the existence of the code but verify that there are no tasks for the parents to complete.

We are also including new conditional logic to review subsequent ISIRs as they are processed to determine if the the parent tax transcript tasks should be added/removed based on the additional/removal of conditions.

These conditions are referenced in IFAP - Electronic Announcements    

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Comment Code 401

Relating the the student’s tax information provided through the IRS DRT, StudentForms will trigger a copy of the tax return transcript based on the student’s filing status when one or more of these conditions applies:

• The student’s adjusted gross income is less than or equal to zero and the combined income of student and spouse is greater than zero

• The student’s additional financial information total calculated by CPS > student’s adjusted gross income

  • Additionally, the new 2018-2019 Student’s Additional Financial Information Form will be requested to capture additional financial information not captured on the tax return transcript

• The student’s untaxed income total calculated by CPS >= student’s adjusted gross income

  • Additionally, the new 2018-2019 Student’s Untaxed Information Form will be requested to capture untaxed income not reported on the tax return transcript

If a student does not meet any of the above conditions, a notification will be presented to school users during the file review process of the existence of the code but verify that there are no tasks for the student to complete.

We are also including new conditional logic to review subsequent ISIRs as they are processed to determine if the the student tax transcript tasks should be added/removed based on the additional/removal of conditions.

These conditions are referenced in IFAP - Electronic Announcements    

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Amended Taxes Tasks

As mentioned above for the Independent/Dependent Verification Forms, with the removal of IRS Display Flag H (self-reports of amending taxes), the IRS Request Flag value 07 has taken its place as reporting amended taxes. Because this new flag value requires institutions to contact and verify the information, whether or not the student is selected for Verification, StudentForms has built tasks to handle the verification of amended taxes.

Regardless of verification selection and based on dependency status and/or student’s/parents’ filing status, a task will appear to collect the correction documentation from the student/parent (Parents’ 2016 IRS Tax Return Transcript, Parent 1 2016 IRS Tax Return Transcript, etc.).

These conditions are referenced in IFAP - Electronic Announcements    ·         ·    

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IRS Request Flag 06

This IRS DRT Request Flag indicates the student/parents using the IRS DRT, but having a subsequent change that no longer qualifies them to use the IRS DRT, requiring institutions to verify the tax information regardless of verification selection. For students not selected for verification, the following forms are created to help determine the student/parent tax information:  

• Independent Student Tax Information

• Dependent Student Tax Information

• Parent Tax Information