February 10, 2011

Verification Process Changes

The Program Integrity Rules published on Oct. 29 made several changes to the verification process for schools. Effective immediately, schools aren’t required to obtain further documentation of the adjusted gross income or U.S. income tax paid if:

• The applicant or parent used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool and
• The ISIR or SAR lists an IRS Request Flag code of “02.” The “02” code signifies that the data was returned from the IRS and was not changed by the user.

More information about this process can be found in the Department of Education's (ED) ’s Nov. 18 Summary of Changes for the Application Processing System (2011-2012) (PDF).

Please note that other Program Integrity rule changes to the verification requirements aren’t effective until July 1, 2012 (for the 2012-13 award year). OGSLP will provide more in-depth information about these topics in future editions of the Online News.

ED published a new Dependent Verification Worksheet (PDF) and Independent Verification Worksheet (PDF) for the 2011-12 award year on Jan. 3, 2011. The worksheets are provided as tools – schools aren’t required to use them.