German stepfather income tax data

Paying for College
1

My son live the majority of the time with his mom, and so has used her income on the FAFSA. She remarried last year - a German citizen.

The federal government requires my son’s school to verify the household income supplied on the FAFSA for the previous year, which includes documenting taxes paid. My ex-wife supplied her tax return information, but is telling me that it takes up to two years for Germany to make their tax returns available.

For example, she said, his 2014 tax returns only became available around September of this year (2016). They can supply total income for him, but cannot supply the taxes paid for 2015 until some time well into 2017.

Can anyone help me with the following questions:

  1. Seriously?!?! Can anyone comment on the validity of this claim that German tax returns take that long?

  2. Can we ask for some sort of exception? Is anyone familiar with how to garner some sort of allowance for the rule about tax income from the previous year?

  3. Can anyone suggest a resolution? What I’m hearing her say is that neither of my sons will ever be able to get federal financial aid, because they’ll never be able to supply income information in a timely basis.

2

I’m not sure what she is saying. They file on a similar schedule, so you can fill out FAFSA with estimates for now. Perhaps she means he can’t get a clean tax transcript for 2017 from the German Revenue until 2019? Many schools just ask for a copy of the signed foreign return in that case bc they cannot get a transcript.

3

Have you run rough figures to see if you would get any FA anyway? Your wife can ballpark, and your kid lives with her, so it seems in her interests to provide this info to your son. They live in the USA? .

4

Do you realize that federal financial aid GRANTS are for low/modest income students?? Is the combined income of your exW and new Husband low/modest…including any child support you may be providing? If not, then they wouldn’t qualify for federal grants anyway.

Is their household income less than, say, US$60k per year?