Dear Colleague:
On November 26, 2025, we published a Federal Register notice (90 FR 54316) announcing the 2026–2027 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) verification items for applicants selected by the Department as well as the acceptable documentation for those items.
This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) summarizes and explains the changes in the verification process for the 2026–2027 award year. Additionally, at the end of this DCL, we have provided suggested text that an institution may use to fulfill its regulatory verification requirements.
The FUTURE Act Direct Data Exchange (FA-DDX) between the U.S. Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will continue to import most U.S income and tax information to the FAFSA form. The federal tax information (FTI) that is transferred via the FA-DDX to the FAFSA form will continue to be considered verified for Title IV purposes. Therefore, institutions are not required to collect a Tax Return Transcript or a signed copy of the 2024 income tax return if FTI was successfully transferred and used in the Pell Grant eligibility determination and/or Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation.
The Department updated the acceptable documentation for identity verification. Institutions are able to utilize two new methods when verifying identity, namely 1) a video call between the student and institutional personnel as a substitute for the notary statement when the student cannot appear in person at the school, and 2) documentation that the student had their identity verified by a third party using a method satisfying the National Institute of Standards and Technology Identity Assurance Level 2 (NIST IAL2) standard. We encourage in-person verification as the preferred method when verifying identity, but the NIST IAL2 method is an acceptable alternative. If the school determines that a student is unable to appear in person, it can continue to use the signed notary statement method or it can use the new video call method. Please note, if a student chooses to verify their identity through a notary, they must do so in-person. Online notarization is not an acceptable method for our requirements. For more information on identity verification, please see the Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) policy guidance website and click on “Identity Verification.”
Verification of identity reporting for the V4 and V5 verification tracking groups is available in the FAFSA Partner Portal for the 2025-2026 award year. For more information on how to report the V4 and V5 outcomes, please see Electronic Announcement GENERAL-25-36.
As a reminder, institutions can no longer require applicants to submit a Statement of Educational Purpose.
For students who are confined or incarcerated, the verification requirements for the 2026–2027 award year will be largely unchanged from the 2025-2026 award year. Institutions are not required to verify a confined or incarcerated student selected under verification tracking group V1. A confined or incarcerated student (as indicated through the incarcerated applicant flag) will only be required to verify their identity when they are selected for verification tracking group V4 or V5. Acceptable documentation of identity includes official IDs issued by the correctional facility. The Department will consider a confined or incarcerated individual’s identity to be verified if the individual’s identity was verified by an authorized official at the correctional facility where the individual is confined or incarcerated. Additionally, institutions are not required to reverify a confined or incarcerated student’s identity as long as they remain enrolled in the same postsecondary institution at the same correctional facility and have had their identity previously verified under the V4 or V5 verification tracking group. For more information on prison education programs please see: https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/topics/prison-education-programs.
In APPENDIX A, we provide the suggested text for each of the 2026–2027 verification items in the November 26, 2025, Federal Register notice. While use of the suggested text fulfills the regulatory verification requirements, institutions are not required to use the Department’s suggested text and formats. Instead, institutions may develop and use their own text, forms, documents, statements, and certifications that are specific to the items required to be verified for a particular student or group of students. As of the 2025-2026 award year, the Statement of Educational Purpose was removed from our suggested text document. We added a new identity section for institutions to identify which method was used to verify a student’s identity. The signature pages for the verification documents are at the end of the appendix, directly following the documents for non-tax filers and family size.
We suggest that each page of an institutionally developed verification document include appropriate headings and numbering that identify the item(s) being verified. Institutions should ensure that the verification document collects the student’s name, ID number, and other identifying information as determined by the institution so that each page is identified as belonging to that student. Also, because institutions may on occasion have difficulty matching tax return documentation with a particular student if, for example, the last names are different or if portions of the tax filer’s identifiers are redacted, we recommend that institutions advise students to write their own name on tax documents (when those are required) prior to submitting them to the institution. Verification documents should include any necessary special instructions so that students will know when and how documents are to be submitted to the institution. Institutions are reminded that documentation obtained as part of the verification process must be maintained at the institution for at least the required Title IV record retention period as outlined in Volume 2 of the Federal Student Aid Handbook.
We thank institutions for their cooperation and continued role in safeguarding the integrity of the Title IV programs and in preventing improper payments.
Sincerely,
David Barker
Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education