"At the University of Nebraska at Kearney, the spring semester started Monday. But ongoing technical issues at the Internal Revenue Service meant some students at the campus still hadn’t been approved to receive the federal student aid they needed to attend classes," Inside Higher Ed reports. "That’s because they were selected for a process known as income verification. And those IRS technical issues meant the students -- like others at campuses across the country -- couldn’t get the necessary paperwork to prove they qualified for aid awards."

"On Wednesday, though, the Education Department released long-awaited guidance giving financial aid administrators alternative ways to verify students’ family incomes.

Mary Sommers, the financial aid director at the Kearney campus, said there was a “little explosion of cheering” in her office after the guidance was released.

'It would help these students so much,' she said.

The department’s new guidance allows students to submit tax returns to demonstrate family income instead of tax transcripts from the IRS, an official document including line items like gross income, that can take weeks to obtain -- even when the process is working correctly. And non-tax filers can submit signed statements that they did not file taxes.

... The technical issues at IRS happened as the agency furloughed employees because of the ongoing government shutdown. Officials told news outlets that those issues were the result of routine maintenance and not the shutdown. But student aid groups were still frustrated with the timing and lack of communication from the agency.

'Even on a good day, when everything is working right at IRS, obtaining tax transcripts is an arduous and difficult process,' said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 'That’s why we lobbied for this.'"

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Publication Date: 1/10/2019