Federal Tax Info and Data Sharing
FAFSA contributors must give the U.S. Department of Education consent to retrieve federal tax information (FTI) from the Internal Revenue Service to determine financial aid eligibility.
FTI consists of federal tax returns and return information filed with the IRS. Starting with the 2024-2025 award year, FAFSA contributors (student and spouse or parent/stepparent, as applicable) must give the U.S. Department of Education consent to retrieve FTI from the IRS for purposes of determining a student's eligibility for Title IV federal student aid.
The FAFSA now has the FUTURE Act-Direct Data Exchange (FA-DDX), which established a secure connection between the IRS and the Department of Education to retrieve FTI data. If the student, spouse, or parent fails to provide consent, the student is not eligible for Title IV aid—no exceptions.
FTI for each tax filer includes the following:
- Tax year (e.g., 2022 tax year information for the 2024-25 FAFSA)
- Tax filing status
- Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)
- Number of exemptions and number of dependents
- Income earned from work
- Taxes paid
- Educational tax credits
- Untaxed individual retirement arrangement/account (IRA) distributions
- IRA deductions and payments
- Untaxed pension amounts
- Tax-exempt interest
- Schedule C net profit/loss
- Indicators for Schedules A, B, D, E, F, and H
- IRS response code (e.g., successful request, no return on file, etc.)
The FAFSA now has blocks of data for specific purposes related to FTI. The FTI block will include four subgroups:
- Student
- Student Spouse
- Parent
- Parent spouse or partner
The FAFSA is readily available to complete; however, the Department of Education continues to track known issues with the new form. Please continue to view our FAFSA Changes page for continual updates as more information becomes available to us from the Department of Education.
FTI is categorized as Controlled Unclassified Information/Specified Tax (CUI//SP-TAX) and may contain sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Accordingly, all FTI must be handled—at minimum—in accordance with the confidentiality protections of Section 6103(l)(13) of the IRC and in accordance with the use restrictions of FTI under Sections 483 and 494 of HEA as amended by the FAFSA Simplification Act.
Institutions may, with the applicant’s written consent, release FTI to a scholarship granting organization or to an organization assisting the applicant in applying for and receiving federal, state, local or tribal assistance that is designated by the applicant to assist the applicant in applying for and receiving financial assistance for any component of the applicant's cost of attendance.
While institutions may not release FTI for other purposes, even with the applicant’s written consent, they must release a complete Institutional Student Information Record (i.e., the FAFSA), including FTI, directly to an applicant upon their request. The applicant can then redisclose their own FTI in any way they choose.
The student may submit an FTI Redisclosure Consent Form in their MyUWF to authorize consent for the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships to disclose FTI from their FAFSA to the entities as defined by the student, but only for the purpose of applying for and receiving federal, state, local or tribal assistance toward cost of attendance.
No. FERPA is The 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and it is a federal law (20 U.S.C. 1232g) that protects the privacy of a student’s educational record. FERPA applies to all educational institutions receiving funds from the U.S. Department of Education.
The FERPA release on the student's MyUWF allows students to indicate a third party to which information (academic/financial, etc.) may be released, such as parents. Information releases can be created for individuals or entities to whom the student wants to release information. Releases can be created for up to one year at a time.
An education record is any record directly related to a student (such as academic and personal records relating to scholastic, disciplinary and fiscal matters) that is maintained by an educational agency or institution, or by a party acting for the agency or institution.
FTI is protected separately in accordance with the confidentiality protections of the Internal Revenue Code and subject to Section 6103(l)(13) of the IRC requirements as well as the use restrictions of FTI under Section 483 of HEA as amended by the FAFSA Simplification Act.
Yes, but the data we can share differs between the student and any other FAFSA contributor.
We can share a FAFSA Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) that includes FTI with the student and any spouse or parent contributor on that ISIR.
Consistent with Section 494(c)(1) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended [20 USC 1098h(c)(1)], "an institution, upon request by an applicant, shall provide them with all of the information on the ISIR, including contributor FTI. This request shall be fulfilled without written consent from a contributor(s) for their respective FTI to be disclosed to the applicant."
If a contributor other than the student requests a copy of a student's FTI or ISIR, the contributor would only have access to their own FTI. For example, if the parent on the FAFSA requests a copy of the ISIR, then only the parent's FTI can be shared with the parent; the other contributor's data would need to be redacted.
Once UWF provides a student with a copy of their ISIR, including an ISIR with parent or spouse contributor FTI, the student then owns the ISIR and all of the information on it, and is responsible for protecting any data it includes. After the school provides the ISIR to the student, the school cannot control with whom the student shares that ISIR.