The Department of Education has announced several important updates today regarding the inconsistent tax data affecting up to 20% of FAFSA applications for the upcoming 2024-25 academic year.
In response to feedback from colleges, the Department announced that it will automatically reprocess all FAFSA records affected by the April 1 announcement. They will also reprocess records that were affected from other previously identified issues for which students’ contributions from assets were calculated incorrectly. The reprocessing of records will occur in the first half of April.
It’s important to note that the Department stated that “Schools and states will still have the ability to use their judgment to rely on the original ISIR sent—not the reprocessed record—if the original ISIR results in greater financial aid eligibility for students.”
As a temporary solution for schools to identify affected ISIR records, the Department hosted a webinar which discussed the resources available. The solution provided by the Department is to send schools two lists of Universally Unique Identification Numbers (UUIDs).
One list will be those of records not affected (“Records Unaffected by Known Errors” ) and another list will have the records affected (“Records Affected by Known Errors”). The CSV file lists will be sent in the coming days to all Destination Point Administrators (DPAs) who currently manage the ISIR service at their organization.
Unfortunately, both files will be massive as they will contain UUIDs on all FAFSA records and will not be specific to a state or institution.
To further assist schools on checking their specific ISIR files, the Department has developed an open-source look-up tool. When a UUID is entered in the tool, the results will show if the specific FAFSA record has a known issue or is clear. The tool is available at the Department’s GitHub repository
In the coming days, the Department will send additional data to SAIG mailboxes to assist schools and states with analyzing affected records. The data will be school- or state-specific and will identify the known issue on each record that triggered reprocessing.
SOURCES:
- (GENERAL-24-31) 2024-25 FAFSA Tax Data Follow-up: Releasing List of Unaffected FAFSA Records to Schools (Updated April 3, 2024)
- (GENERAL-24-34) Reprocessing ISIRs with Known Data Issues and Resolution of Access Issues for Students who have Required Contributors without Social Security Numbers
- 2024-25 FAFSA Fast News