Posted Date:October 26, 2017
| Author: | Federal Student Aid |
Subject: Issue Alert: 2018-19 FAFSA.gov Issue with Incorrect Tax Filing Status Values Resolved; CPS Reprocessing Planned
Federal Student Aid (FSA) identified and has since corrected an issue on the 2018-19 FAFSA.gov website that caused incorrect information to be submitted to the Central Processing System (CPS) and displayed on the Student Aid Report (SAR) sent to applicants. Specifically, applicants may have been impacted if they initially indicated in the student section that they have “already completed” or “will file” an IRS income tax return and provided responses for subsequent financial questions in error, then returned to the first IRS income tax return completion question and changed their response to “not going to file.” When this scenario occurs, there is an issue where the logic that assigns blank responses to financial questions in response to the updated “not going to file” value is not functioning correctly.
As a result, applicants impacted by this issue are receiving 2018-19 SARs that list an invalid Tax Return Filing Status value (such as “married, filing joint”) instead of the blank value that should be generated due to the “not going to file” response to the IRS income tax return question on FAFSA.gov.
While the issue has since been corrected, FSA is developing a plan for the CPS to reprocess 2018-19 student records impacted by the issue. We recommend that you monitor the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website in the coming week for an additional electronic announcement detailing the upcoming reprocessing of impacted records.
Contact Information
If you have any questions, contact CPS/SAIG Technical Support at 800/330-5947 (TDD/TTY 800/511-5806) or by e-mail at CPSSAIG@ed.gov.