Has anyone had an accountant complete the fafsa form for you? I completed them last year but this year I thought I’d have her do it for us since shes doing our taxes, etc. and I want to be sure we did everything right the first time.
Your run of the mill CPA isn’t necessarily particularly familiar with fafsa so I would check. Also, an accountant generally doesn’t need to know any savings/investment balances to do your taxes, just the earnings documents you get in January. So you would still have to provide asset balances. You would also have to provide the info about untaxed income if there is any.
Never did. Once you have your tax return, really…completing the FAFSA is pretty easy.
I read somewhere that it is a bad idea to ask the accountant to complete the FAFSA since they do not know all the requirements of each of the line items in FAFSA. I find the book entitled “Paying for College without going broke by Kalman A. Chany” extremely useful. There are some income questions that are tricky. Besides, do you think your accountant has the vested interest of getting the EFC as low as possible?
As an accountant, there’s really nothing about the FAFSA that I understand more than a parent who has successfully completed it before. Most of the really complicated FAFSA issues to my knowledge have nothing to do with (for example) tax law and everything to do with education law which accountants don’t study as a matter of course. Unless your accountant says that she knows what she’s doing with the FAFSA she might not be any better it completing it than you are. If you really don’t feel like dealing with it it wouldn’t be a problem to ask, but I don’t think that she would have any special insight as to answering those questions if she isn’t familiar with the FAFSA already.
If you have already finished the Profile, it seems that there is a template for filing FAFSA that makes it even easier.
Depends on your accountant. Most know little about it. Others do them routinely and our tax software facilitates the process. If yours has any knowledge of the form and you want to save time, then go ahead. But if they seem confused, I’d do it myself. We schedule appointments with people who have a senior in high school in January so we can get it done for them. If your accountant hasn’t even mentioned it to you, then most likely they know little about it.
The accountant offered to do it for us. She had asked about it last year too but I already had it done. My other concern is giving her my kids pin numbers to get on to fafsa. I trust her, dont get me wrong or i wouldnt even consider it, but its all the “do not give your pin number to anyone” that is on the fafsa page that is making me think twice.
Monroe…you have already done a FAFSA once. Trust me…the second time it’s a lot easier than the first. Do it yourself.
Your concern about the PINs is a good one. The student pin is also used for their student loans. I would NOT give that out unnecessarily…even to someone I trust.