Common app and college board (who handles the profile) are separate companies. Their policies differ. Did you apply to 18 top/elite US schools? Without knowing your standardized test scores? Or have you taken them previously as well? If you had planned to take them in January in China or Macao you would have been up a creek.
- typo. Macau
So your parents don’t want to pay for your education, but they expect the colleges to?
I would not write the explanation, just report income and assets honestly.
Otherwise if they read that your family made and extra 10 Lau every year without being taxed on it, they would figure you had a lot more available income.
OP you have rec’d some good advice. I commend your wanting to do the right thing even if your parents don’t understand that intentionally misrepresenting financial info is fraud, and hence not only immoral but not legal.
Just to let you know, when we did CSS Profile last year for the first time I also put tons of info on the Explanation section. S’s school contacted us to say that it was not useful at all! In putting together a financial aid package they work with a service which forwards a summary report (tailored to the info they in particular are looking for). The best way to make your case is to put as much detail into the categories provided.
So, as you heard, taxed and untaxed income are easy ways to do that.