Seriously? Taxes and financial aid are soooo confusing. I consider myself a fairly bright individual with perhaps above-average powers of deduction and reasoning. But darnit if, year after year, I submit my taxes and financial aid with a niggling feeling that I have (unintentionally) committed some kind of tax error that could land me in some kind of trouble (not that people who have no income and pay no taxes could really be in big trouble).
Every year, my parents give me a little cash to help with the day-to-day--to help keep my loans from soaring into the >quartermillionbygraduation range. But I am not their dependent. The money comes from their taxed income. It's already taxed--it's not really wages, nor is it "untaxed income" like social security or what-not. It's a "gift", which they can put on their taxes as such, but where do I put it? And on FAFSA there's no section for that. There are sections for "money paid or received on your behalf", but that's not really what a cash gift is. So now I've ended up with a bunch of "$0"s everywhere on my financial aid forms without really knowing what I'm doing.
This is why docs need financial advisors, I guess.
*le sigh*
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