Hi!
I posted a thread here 2 years ago when I started filing my first FAFSA. Shout out to @kelsmom and others for helping me out with that stressful process. I really appreciate it!
My dad (has a green card and SSN) is now living in Vietnam with my mom (never lives in the U.S - no document here) for about 2 years now. He has a re-entry permit so he’s planning to come back here around October this year. He did not file 2023 and 2024 tax return because he did not earn any income. I filed both years as independence.
This year 2025-2026, I’m transferring to University of Houston for Fall semester. On the FAFSA, it asks for my dad and mom tax information. Should I just put “did not file tax because of no income”? It also doesn’t ask for my tax return. I was just wondering how this would work. Is there any letters I need to write like last time?
You’ll need to say that they didn’t file a U.S. tax return. You’ll also need to include any income that they received in Vietnam. It should walk them through when they complete the parent section. Here is a link to reporting information if your parents filed a tax return in Vietnam: Federal Student Aid. If they didn’t earn any income at all and therefore didn’t file a tax return, you will report $0 for their income. It is likely that you will be selected for verification as a result, but you’ll just need to provide whatever documentation that the school requires if that occurs.
If you checked the box authorizing the FAFSA to link to your tax return, that happened behind the scenes & you would not have noticed - the reason your parents have to enter tax information manually is because they didn’t file a U.S. tax return.
You mentioned filing as an independent student. That is a determination made based on questions on the FAFSA. If answers to the questions don’t allow you to be automatically considered independent, you would have had to do a dependency override through the school. This is a school-by-school determination, meaning that you would need to talk to the new school as soon as possible if you want to be considered for a dependency override there.