Is it necessary to "Link to IRS" on FAFSA?

[13132]

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My parents have prepared their taxes with an accountant, so I was able to put exact numbers into my FAFSA when i submitted a few days ago. However, the haven't actually filed them officially until today. In order for the FAFSA to be officially complete do I need to select "Already completed" versus "Will File" for my parents tax information? Does their/my tax information need to be eventually linked in to the FAFSA from the IRS via the IRS retrieval tool? Will I miss any deadlines/priority dates if I leave it as is? FAFSA says that the retrieval tool may not work if your parents submitted electronically in the past three weeks.

Basically, I am just wondering if the way I submitted (with exact numbers but selecting "Will File") is acceptable for now and when I will need to change to "Already completed" and link my FAFSA with the IRS information. When I change to "Already completed" is prompts me to use the IRS retrieval tool, but that doesn't work because they just submitted.

 

[DR MOM]

You should check with the schools. Some schools want at least the student to link and others may want both, or not care for either to be linked as long as you send in copies by the deadline.

 

[13132]

You should check with the schools. Some schools want at least the student to link and others may want both, or not care for either to be linked as long as you send in copies by the deadline.

Do you think I could link after priority dates and still be considered as having submitted before the priority date? If it takes 3 weeks for the IRS link to work then thats means my parents would have needed to submit their taxes like the first week of February when they didn't get the necessary information until the week before. That would be a little extreme, so I hope I still meet some of these priority dates of 3/1-3/2 and the linking just needs to be done by the actual deadline.

 

[mcloaf]

I submitted with "will file" estimates last year and didn't update with actual numbers until like June. Wasn't an issue.

 

[terp720]

My parents have prepared their taxes with an accountant, so I was able to put exact numbers into my FAFSA when i submitted a few days ago. However, the haven't actually filed them officially until today. In order for the FAFSA to be officially complete do I need to select "Already completed" versus "Will File" for my parents tax information? Does their/my tax information need to be eventually linked in to the FAFSA from the IRS via the IRS retrieval tool? Will I miss any deadlines/priority dates if I leave it as is? FAFSA says that the retrieval tool may not work if your parents submitted electronically in the past three weeks.

Basically, I am just wondering if the way I submitted (with exact numbers but selecting "Will File") is acceptable for now and when I will need to change to "Already completed" and link my FAFSA with the IRS information. When I change to "Already completed" is prompts me to use the IRS retrieval tool, but that doesn't work because they just submitted.

I don't think you have to link to the retrieval tool unless you want to, it seems more of a matter of convenience so you don't have to fill it in by hand. I had already filed (as in mailed) my taxes when I was filling out my FAFSA, but it said something like "if you submitted your taxes electronically over 3 weeks ago, or by mail over 11 weeks ago". So I filed my taxes, I selected that I had already completed them, but I couldn't use the tool.

If your parents officially filed your taxes today, you can say their taxes are complete.

If they hadn't submitted, you could check "will file", submit it, then just make a change to "filed" once they had done it (which is what I am doing for my parents).

 

[13132]

Thanks for the input. I did change my parents status to "Already completed" and I will just link it to the IRS whenever I can.

 

[Wasted Energy]

One more thing to consider is that not using the IRS data retrieval tool increases your chances of being selected for a process called "verification." Not a huge deal, but a headache nonetheless.

 

[terp720]

One more thing to consider is that not using the IRS data retrieval tool increases your chances of being selected for a process called "verification." Not a huge deal, but a headache nonetheless.

true. a lot of my schools asked for paper copies of records anyway, so didn't think about this.

but if they filed by paper, it will take a few weeks to show up I think