FAFSA and joint IRS tax filings - the income questions...?

Question

My wife and I filed our taxes jointly. She does not (and didn't through the taxable year), I did. We are both planning on enrolling in college, I'm filling out our fafsas online currently.

Im stuck on a question though. What should I put on her fafsa for "how much income did you earn from wages etc...."? She did not work, so she made no wages, but we filed taxes jointly so aren't our incomes technically shared?

The financial aid office at our college of choice advised me that on both our fafsas we would put that we provide more than half of the support of our child, since we filed jointly. Thats whats confusing me, not sure how to approach this question based on that.

Thanks.

Answer 1

My wife and I also both attended college at the same time.  You fill out the forms just like you would if only one of you were doing it.  If you both made, for example, $30,000 in combined income you would both put down $30,000 as income on the FAFSA.  It doesn't matter who worked or who stayed home if you file jointly.  In the eyes of the government anything one of you earns is owned equally between the two of you...

You should both put that you provide half or more support to your children on the FAFSA.

Answer 2

Okay, on your fafsa.  On the question, "How much did you earn from working..." you would put down the amount you earned for the year.. say $28,582.  On the question about your spouse, "How much did she earn from working?"  you would put ZERO.  

Do not put down that she earned income that she did not.  It will come back as an error and will delay processing.  If you put 28,582 on BOTH of your incomes the fafsa application assumes you had a combined income of $57,164  which is of course highly inflated and is not conducive to getting a lot of fin assistance.

On HER fafsa you would do the exact same thing, just flipped, her income (student) would be zero you would be spouse.

On the dependency questions for BOTH of your applications you would both indicate you have children who receive more than half of your support.  She would NOT say no to this this question because she had no income.

Hope it helps.