FAFSA Business Asset Confusion

6lambs
Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:57:39 +0000

Going through the initial process of vetting S1’s financial aid award letter he received with that schools FA dept. I’m getting what appears to be contradictory statements as to whether or not certain buisness assets should be included or not on the FAFSA form.

Here’s the brief scenario. We own minority positions (less than 10%) in a couple of non-family owned businesses, each with only 5 or less employees. From what I understood of the qualifying conditions regarding business assets, and having completed the CSS/Profile which also directed us to include these amounts on the FAFSA, I assume that these assets should be included. Further confusing this matter, also, is the fact that we also own 100% of another business, a small family run construction company which the CSS/Profile also stated should be included as a listable business asset on the FAFSA as well, which per the above qualifications as I understand it should NOT be included.

The rep from this university’s FA dept has stated unequivocally that these business assets (the non-family owned bizs) should NOT be listed on the FAFSA since any business we own less than 50% of should not count regardless, even if it had more than 100 employees. This is the rep’s own position per his email.

It’s in our best interest (it would reduce our EFC by $6-$7K) to not list the assets if we don’t have to, which is what this FA rep is instructing us to do as part of the verification process when we correct our FAFSA once our 2010 returns are finalized. We have not received any other award letters yet so I do not yet know how other schools will interpret the above. I thought the above was all fairly straight forward until I received these recent comments/instructions. The fact that the CSS/Profile instructions to include our 100% owned family business (I did not) along with the other non-family owned ones as assets on the FAFSA doesn’t help the matter, either.

Makes me wonder just how much everyone involved in the entire financial aid process is all on the same page. Thoughts?

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