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The Department of Education announced Monday that it would give added flexibility for colleges after the removal of a data retrieval tool created to simplify the financial aid process.
Effective immediately, institutions can accept a signed paper copy of the 2015 IRS tax return in place of an tax transcript, which can take up to two weeks to receive. And institutions will no longer be required to get documentation verifying that a student or their parents did not file a tax return in 2015. Both changes apply to the 2016-17 and 2017-18 aid cycles.
The IRS data retrieval tool allows students to automatically import income information already on file with the federal government into the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. It was abruptly taken down in March because of concerns over the security of the website.
“These flexibilities are an important step toward making the process easier. They help applicants who normally would have used the IRS DRT to more easily complete the application process,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a statement. “We will continue to look for additional ways to ease the burdens created by the IRS DRT outage until the tool can be restored with added security measures in place later this year.”
Student aid groups called for the tool to be restored as quickly as possible and asked in the meantime that the department take steps to provide relief to students affected by its removal. The department's announcement Monday implements one of the specific steps requested by those student groups. But it didn't address others, including a request that the department reconsider its criteria for verification checks of student income information.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators found in a recent poll of members that more than a quarter of institutions has seen an increase in verification checks as a result of the data retrieval tool's removal. And 81 percent of respondents said the verification process had taken longer since the outage.
Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, said in a statement that 20 million families fill out the FAFSA each year and the absence of the tool since March was "a huge inconvenience."
"Secretary DeVos's steps today help to reduce that inconvenience, but it is important to get the system up and running as quickly as possible with adequate protections for taxpayers' data," he said.
