FAFSA 24-25 SAI calculation nightmare - rejected due to parent tax mismatch?

I'm a financial aid counselor, and this is actually a common issue with the 24-25 FAFSA, especially for families with self-employment income. The Data Retrieval Tool sometimes struggles with Schedule C income because it doesn't always capture the net vs. gross income properly. Here's what you need to do: 1. Print out your parents' complete tax return including ALL schedules 2. Compare line 12 on Schedule 1 with what's showing in your FAFSA 3. You'll likely need to manually override the DRT data 4. When manually entering, make sure you're entering the NET self-employment income (after expenses) If you're still having trouble, call FSA directly at 1-800-433-3243 and ask specifically for help with a "Schedule C DRT mismatch error." They can look at your specific error codes.

omg same exact thing happened to me!!! the stupid system kept saying there was a mismatch but my parents taxes were fine. took me like 5 submissions before it finally went through. so annoying that we have to deal with this just to get financial aid 🙄

I had this problem too and it's driving me CRAZY!!! The FAFSA system is COMPLETELY BROKEN this year. My family filed jointly, and we had rental property income which the system couldn't handle properly. After 4 submissions and multiple rejection emails, I finally had to submit it WITHOUT using the DRT tool and manually enter all the tax info exactly as it appears on their return. It took forever but eventually worked. This FAFSA 24-25 is a total disaster compared to previous years!

Have you tried calling the Federal Student Aid helpline? I know everyone says its impossible to get through but I used this service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that got me connected to an actual FSA representative in about 20 minutes instead of waiting for hours. They have a video showing how it works here: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ The FSA rep was able to see exactly which fields were causing the error and walked me through fixing it. Saved me so much time compared to submitting and getting rejected again.

why is everyone having so much trouble?? i filled out the fafsa in like 20 minutes and it went through fine lol

For anyone dealing with self-employment income discrepancies, here's the technical explanation: The FAFSA 24-25 system is incorrectly handling Schedule C income by sometimes pulling the gross receipts (Line 1) instead of the net profit/loss (Line 31). This causes an automatic rejection when their verification system compares against IRS records. The solution: 1. DO NOT use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool if you have Schedule C income 2. Enter all tax information manually 3. Make sure you're using the NET income amount from Line 31 of Schedule C 4. Double-check all the Schedule 1 additional income entries 5. If rejected again, request a manual review by submitting a case through your school's financial aid office I work with financial aid applications, and we've seen dozens of these cases this year. It's a known issue they're supposedly fixing, but no timeline has been given.

After dealing with this exact issue, I finally got my FAFSA approved and my SAI calculated. Here's what worked for me: 1. I stopped using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool completely 2. Manually entered ALL tax information from the paper returns 3. Called FSA and specifically mentioned the Schedule C income issue 4. Asked them to note on my account that I was having the known Schedule C bug 5. Resubmitted with the manually entered data It processed correctly within 3 days after that. And my SAI ended up being much lower than what the glitched system was calculating! So it's definitely worth fixing properly.

its so stupid that they made all these changes to the fafsa and now nothing works right. like they were supposed to make it easier but instead nobody can get through 🤬

Quick update for everyone in this thread: FSA just released guidance to financial aid offices about the Schedule C income reporting issues with the 24-25 FAFSA. They're implementing a patch this weekend that should fix the DRT data transfer problems for self-employment income. If you're still struggling with this issue, try waiting until Monday to resubmit. You can also request that your school note in your file that you were affected by the known FAFSA Schedule C bug (reference FSA Electronic Announcement #24-7.3 if they ask for documentation).

As someone who just went through this exact nightmare, I want to add that you should also check if your parents amended their tax return after the initial filing. The FAFSA system doesn't automatically update when amendments are filed, which can cause these verification mismatches. I spent weeks thinking it was a Schedule C issue, but it turned out my dad had filed an amended return in November that I didn't know about. Once I updated the FAFSA with the amended return info, everything processed smoothly. Also, save screenshots of every error message you get - my financial aid office was much more helpful when I could show them the specific error codes rather than just describing the problem.