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Summary of Enhancements to the 

2014-2015 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)

General Change

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) has long been constructed to collect 

information about both of a student’s parents only if the parents are married and has used the 

gender-specific terms “mother/stepmother,” and “father/stepfather.” As a result, the FAFSA 

has excluded income and other information from one of the student’s legal parents if the 

parents are unmarried but are living together and is therefore inconsistent with the statutory 

expected family contribution (EFC) calculation provisions that do not reference the parents’ 

marital status or gender. 

To address this inconsistency, the Department is making a change to the collection of parental 

information on the FAFSA. Beginning with the 2014-2015 FAFSA, the response “Unmarried and 

both parents living together” will be added to the existing responses for the parents’ marital 

status question. When this new response is chosen, the FAFSA will collect information from 

both of the dependent student’s legal (biological or adoptive) parents if they live together to 

calculate the student’s EFC regardless of the marital status or gender of the parents. This 

change makes the application and the EFC calculation consistent with the statute (HEA section 

475) which uses the terms “parent” and “parents’,” rather than “mother,” “father,” or 

“spouse.” In some instances, the FAFSA will now use the gender neutral term “Parent” in lieu 

of the gender specific terms. However, it will also continue to use terms such as “father,”

“mother,” “stepfather” and “stepmother” where appropriate.

Dependent students whose legal parents are unmarried and not living together would continue 

to provide the parental information on the parent that the student resided with the greater 

portion of the 12 months preceding the date of completing and submitting the FAFSA.

The change will also provide a more equitable assessment of the financial resources available to 

the student, regardless of the student’s parents’ marital status or the gender of the student’s 

parents, and therefore makes the application and process more inclusive to recognize the 

diversity of American families.

FAFSA on the Web (FOTW)

The Department will make enhancements to FOTW in order to collect the necessary 

information from the dependent student’s legal parents who are unmarried and are living 

together. FOTW will use display logic to ask the same questions for married parents and 

parents who are unmarried and living together. However, when the response is “Unmarried 

and both parents living together,” questions that reference “father/stepfather” and 

“mother/stepmother” will be replaced by references to “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” or simply 

refer to “parents.” The reworded parental information questions will only be presented to 
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dependent students and to independent students who indicate they wish to provide parental 

information. 

As is presently the case for married parents who file taxes separately, parents who are 

unmarried will not be presented the option of using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool because neither 

the IRS Data Retrieval Tool nor FOTW is currently able to collect financial information 

separately for each of those parents.

FOTW instructions will be modified to include the new “Unmarried and both parents living 

together” response where applicable or will reference the reworded questions. The 

Department will also provide guidance informing students and parents on how to input IRS 

information if they filed separate tax returns (1040, 1040A, or 1040 EZ) or have different filing 

statuses (e.g., filer, non-filer, or foreign tax return filer). The guidance will include information 

on how to answer Questions 80-94 and will be available to all FOTW users. 

The change described above impacts other FAFSA data elements on pages 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the 

paper instrument referenced below. In addition to the change to the dependent student’s 

parents’ marital status question, we are also making other enhancements to the 2014-2015 

FAFSA as discussed below.

Field Length Changes

Field Lengths - The field lengths for dollar amounts on the FAFSA are increased to seven digits

for the following Questions: 36, 37, 39-45, 85, 86, and 88-94. The EFC field length is increased

to six digits.

FAFSA Question/Response Changes

Page 1

The last sentence in paragraph one of the “Using Your Tax Return” section will now read, “. . . 

you can submit your FAFSA now using estimated tax information, and then you must correct

that information after you file your return.”

Page 2

The last sentence in paragraph two of the “Notes for questions 14 and 15” will now read, “If 

you have a Social Security Number but are not a citizen or an eligible noncitizen, you should still 

complete the FAFSA because you may be eligible for state or college aid.” These instructions 

clarify how noncitizen and eligible noncitizen students should answer the citizenship question.

Page 3

• Revised Question 24 to read “Highest school completed by Parent 1” 
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• Revised Question 25 to read “Highest school completed by Parent 2”

Page 4 and Page 6

The Department has added two new questions to the FAFSA which results in the renumbering 

of existing questions.

 Added Question 34 (Page 4) - “What is or will be your tax filing status for 2013?”

 Added Question 82 (Page 6) - “What is or will be your parents’ tax filing status for 2013?”

Applicants will have the option to select the following IRS tax filing statuses: 

 Single;

 Head of household;

 Married, filed joint return;

 Married, filed separate return;

 Qualifying widow(er); or

 Don’t know

These enhancements will allow the Department to identify instances where the reported 

parent or student marital status on the FAFSA is inconsistent with the IRS tax return filing 

status. Ensuring consistency will improve the accuracy of financial information used to 

calculate the applicant’s EFC. 

On FAFSA on the Web (FOTW), if the student and parents answer that an IRS tax return has or 

will be filed or has been completed, the new tax filing status question will be displayed. Parents 

who are unmarried and living together (see discussion above) will not be presented with the tax 

filing status question since neither the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, nor FOTW is able to collect 

financial information separately for each of those parents.

Page 5 and Page 7

• Revised Question 45i (Page 5) and 94i (Page 7) to remove the sentence, “Also include the 

first-time homebuyer tax credit from IRS Form 1040—line 67”, because this tax credit expired 

with the 2012 tax year and is not available for the 2013 tax year.

• Added the sentence “Also include the untaxed portions of health saving accounts from IRS 

Form 1040 – line 25” to Questions 45i (Page 5) and 94i (Page 7). This sentence was added 

because tax free contributions to health saving accounts are considered untaxed income.

Page 6
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• Revised Question 59 to read “As of today, what is the marital status of your legal parents?”

o Revised “Single” to “Never married”

o Added a new response, “Unmarried and both parents living together”

• Removed parent references in individual questions and prefaced these questions with the 

following:

o “Questions 61-64 are for Parent 1 (father/mother/stepparent)”

o “Questions 65-68 are for Parent 2 (father/mother/stepparent)”

• Added instructional text before Question 80 to read, “If your answer to question 59 was 

“Unmarried and both parents living together,” contact 1-800-4FED-AID for assistance answering 

questions 80-94”.

Page 7

• Reworded Question 88 to read “How much did Parent 1 (father/mother/stepparent) earn 

from working in 2013?” 

• Reworded Question 89 to read “How much did Parent 2 (father/mother/stepparent) earn 

from working in 2013?”