Tracking group V1 is the income and family size group. There is no identity step in it, so nothing here involves a photo ID or a notary. And for most 2026-27 filers, the income half is already finished: the 2026-27 Application and Verification Guide (AVG), Chapter 4 states that when federal tax information is received from the IRS through the FA-DDX, “the FTI received is considered verified and no additional documentation is necessary.” What is usually left is your family size, a signed school worksheet, and two narrow items the IRS transfer never covers.
This page goes deep on V1 alone. If you also need to compare V1 against V4 and V5, start with FAFSA verification groups explained.
One useful framing before the details: V4 is identity only and V5 is V1 plus identity, so V1 is the only set of items that applies to every selected applicant, filer and non-filer alike.
What V1 requires for 2026-27
The item list is not set by the regulation. It is set by an annual notice. 34 CFR 668.56(a) says the Secretary publishes, “For each award year,” the FAFSA information that a school and an applicant may be required to verify. For 2026-27 that notice is 90 FR 54316, published November 26, 2025, which the AVG names directly, and the Department’s suggested wording for each item is in GEN-25-10, Appendix A.
That chain matters. It is what lets you say, without hedging, that anything outside the published list is not a federal V1 item.
Tax filers must verify ten items for 2026-27:
| Item | Where it comes from on the 2024 Form 1040 (or 1040-NR) |
|---|---|
| Adjusted gross income | Line 11 |
| Income earned from work | Line 1z + Schedule 1: Lines 3 + 6 |
| U.S. income tax paid | Line 24 |
| Untaxed portions of IRA distributions (excluding rollovers) | Lines 4a minus 4b |
| Untaxed portions of pensions (excluding rollovers) | Lines 5a minus 5b |
| IRA deductions and payments | Schedule 1: Lines 16 + 20 |
| Tax exempt interest income | Line 2a |
| Education credits | Line 29 + Schedule 3: Line 3 |
| Foreign income exempt from federal taxation | Schedule 1: Line 8d |
| Family size | See the family size section below |
Line references are the AVG’s own chart. The AVG adds one note worth knowing: for income earned from work, negative values are set to zero. If Line 1z is $50,000 and Schedule 1, Line 3 is -$10,000, the figure is $50,000, not $40,000.
Non-tax filers verify only two items: income earned from work, and family size. That is the entire income-side scope for someone who was not required to file.
Note the tax year. Every 2026-27 document the Department names is a 2024 document.
Why most of the income half needs no paperwork
Items one through eight above, meaning everything from AGI down through education credits, do not need to be verified at all if they transferred directly from the IRS and were not changed. GEN-25-10 is explicit that schools “are not required to collect a Tax Return Transcript or a signed copy of the 2024 income tax return if FTI was successfully transferred and used in the Pell Grant eligibility determination and/or Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation.”
Two things sit outside that, and both catch people off guard.
Foreign income exempt from federal taxation is the ninth item, and the AVG carves it out by name. Its sentence is explicit: “Items (a) through (h), if transferred directly from the IRS and unchanged, do not need to be verified. When information is not transferred from the IRS, and for item (i), the following documentation is sufficient for verification.” Item (i) is foreign income. It sits on the documentation side of that sentence whether or not your transfer worked, so if you have an amount on Schedule 1, Line 8d, expect a document request.
Rollovers are the sneakier one. A qualified rollover from one retirement account to another is not taxable and should not be counted as untaxed income. But, in the AVG’s words, “neither a tax transcript nor FTI transferred via the FA-DDX identifies rollovers,” so the school “must get documentation from the tax filer.” A signed statement is what closes it. If you moved a 401(k) into an IRA in 2024, the request you get is not a mistake and not a sign anything is wrong with your file.
If the IRS transfer did not happen
When the transfer is unavailable, the AVG accepts either of two things for the income items:
- A transcript obtained at no cost from the IRS (or the relevant tax authority of a U.S. territory, commonwealth, or foreign government) listing 2024 tax account information, or
- A signed copy of the 2024 income tax return and the applicable schedules that were filed.
Which transcripts count, and which do not:
| Document | Accepted for V1? |
|---|---|
| Tax Return Transcript | Yes |
| Record of Account Transcript | Yes, it contains all the required items |
| Return Transcript for Taxpayer (RTFTP) | Yes, per the Department’s Program Integrity Q&A |
| Wage and Income Transcript | Only in place of a W-2, never for the full item list |
| Information Returns Processing Transcript Request, Wages (IRPTR-W) | Only in place of a W-2 |
| Account Transcript | Not the one to request. Appendix A tells filers to request the “Return Transcript” and NOT the “Account Transcript” |
Four ways to get a 2024 Tax Return Transcript, per Appendix A: Get Transcript Online at irs.gov, Get Transcript by Mail, an automated telephone request at 1-800-908-9946, or a paper request on IRS Form 4506T-EZ or 4506-T. The last three each take roughly 10 business days from the IRS’s receipt of the request.
Timing trap: request too early and there is nothing to send you. The AVG says to allow two to four weeks after e-filing and six to eight weeks after mailing a return before requesting a transcript.
Two more details that quietly cost families weeks:
- A transcript does not have to be signed. The AVG says transcripts submitted for verification do not need to be signed by the tax filer, though it adds that signing is encouraged, unless the school has reason to doubt their authenticity. Copies of original documents are acceptable.
- Form 8879 is not a signature. The AVG states plainly that a signature on Form 8879, the IRS e-file Signature Authorization, “is not an acceptable substitute for a signature on the tax return.” Print the return, not the authorization. If a paid preparer did the return, the AVG lets a school accept a copy carrying the preparer’s PTIN, SSN, or EIN, signed, stamped, typed, or printed with the preparer’s name and address.
The step-by-step request path is in how to get an IRS Tax Return Transcript.
Family size, and the five times you do not have to prove it
Start here, because most readers land in an exemption.
Family size is not verified at all when it came from the IRS and was used unchanged. The AVG explains that family size is based on the individuals listed and claimed on the tax return, so if it transferred directly from the IRS and was used, it does not need verifying.
Four more situations where the AVG says a school does not have to verify family size:
| Student type | Reported family size | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Dependent | 2 | Single, divorced, separated, or widowed parent |
| Dependent | 3 | Parents married, or unmarried and living together |
| Independent | 2 | Student is married |
| Independent | 1 | Student is single, divorced, separated, or widowed |
And a fifth: if you manually re-entered a family size that is the same number as the one derived from the IRS data, it still does not need verifying.
When it does need documenting, the required document is short. A statement signed by the student, and by one parent if the student is dependent, listing the name and age of each family member for the 2026-27 award year and that person’s relationship to the student. That is the requirement in the AVG and in 34 CFR 668.57(b).
Three things people get wrong on this form:
- The date that governs is the date of verification, not the date you filed. The AVG requires applicants selected for family size verification to update family size to be correct as of the date of verification, unless the change is due to a change in the student’s marital status.
- Unborn children are excluded. Appendix A ties family size to who could be claimed as a dependent on a U.S. tax return at the time the FAFSA is completed, and states the parent “should not include any unborn children in the family size.”
- It has to agree with your dependency answers. If verification exposes a mismatch between family size and the dependency questions, the FAFSA has to be corrected so the two align. If you are unsure which side of that line you are on, see am I dependent or independent.
Number in college: still asked, not verified
This is the single most confusing item in the pillar, and the answer has three layers.
- It is still on the 2026-27 FAFSA. Student question 10 and parent question 35. The 2026-27 AVG, Chapter 2 says the FAFSA Simplification Act “requires the question to be included on the FAFSA form.”
- It is not used to calculate your SAI. The same AVG section says so directly, and the Department’s FAFSA Simplification Act Dear Colleague Letter states that “the number of family members in college is no longer a factor in the need analysis.” Schools may still use it for a special-circumstances adjustment.
- It is not a 2026-27 verification item. The AVG’s V1 lists are closed enumerations, and number in college is on neither of them. Tax filers verify the ten items named above; non-tax filers verify income earned from work and family size. That is the whole set the Department published for 2026-27.
So why do school worksheets still ask? Because the regulation was never conformed. 34 CFR 668.57(c) still carries a full paragraph on documenting “Number of family household members enrolled in eligible postsecondary institutions,” and 668.55(b)(1) still names it as an updatable item. There is no conflict only because 668.56(a) makes the annual notice the operative list and 668.57(d) defers to it for anything else. A school that built its worksheet from the CFR is asking in good faith, and is still asking for a school item rather than a federal one. That distinction has teeth, and the last section explains why.
If you did not file a 2024 return
Non-filers have a two-item scope and a short packet. Per the AVG, you submit:
- A signed and dated statement certifying that you were not required to file a 2024 income tax return, and listing the sources and amounts of earnings, other income, and resources that supported you for the 2024 tax year.
- A copy of IRS Form W-2 for each source of 2024 employment income, or an equivalent document.
- If you have no Social Security number, ITIN, or EIN, a statement saying so. The AVG lists this as its own required element, not an afterthought.
- If you would have filed with a tax authority other than the IRS, verification of non-filing from that authority, dated on or after October 1, 2025. Dependent students are exempt from this one by name.
If a W-2 genuinely cannot be obtained, an IRS W-2 transcript is acceptable, and failing that a school may permit a signed statement giving the amount of income earned from work, the source, and the reason the W-2 is not available in time.
Understand why the school is collecting this. The AVG says the point of documenting income earned from work is “to determine if the applicant (and the applicable spouse or parent) was required to file” for 2024, and that if the individual should have filed but did not, “that is conflicting information that you must resolve.” That resolution has to happen before aid moves. Full detail is in FAFSA verification for non-filers.
The situations that make a V1 packet bigger
| Situation | What you submit |
|---|---|
| Joint filers now separated, divorced, remarried, or widowed | A transcript or a signed return listing 2024 tax account information, and a W-2 for each source of 2024 employment income, so the school can pull one person’s income out of the joint figures. See verification for divorced or separated parents. |
| Filing extension beyond the automatic six months | Four documents: a signed statement listing 2024 income sources and amounts; the IRS’s approval of the extension; a W-2 for each employment source; and, if self-employed, a signed statement of estimated 2024 AGI and U.S. income tax paid. |
| Amended 2024 return | A signed copy of the filed Form 1040X plus one of: the original tax information from the IRS on the ISIR, an IRS transcript of 2024 tax account information, or a signed copy of the 2024 Form 1040 with schedules. |
| Victim of IRS tax-related identity theft | A signed copy of the 2024 return with applicable schedules, plus either an IRS 4674C letter or a signed, dated statement that you were a victim of IRS tax-related identity theft and the IRS is aware of it. |
| Return filed with a non-IRS tax authority | A transcript from that government with all income and tax data, or a signed copy of that return, converted to U.S. dollars. |
The amended-return row deserves a warning. The FA-DDX transfers only original tax information, and the AVG states there is “currently no indicator on the FAFSA form that the tax return was amended and the original data may be inaccurate.” So a family that amended and consented can see clean, auto-verified figures that are wrong. If you amended, tell your aid office. If the school is aware of it, it must use the amended information to complete verification.
What your school owes you, and the deadlines that bite
Start with your leverage. 34 CFR 668.53(b) requires the school to furnish, in a timely manner, a clear explanation of the documentation needed, your responsibilities, “the deadlines for completing any actions required under this subpart and the consequences of failing to complete any required action.” A vague request is not just annoying. There is a rule behind asking for a specific one.
Three federal dates control 2026-27, published in the deadline notice at 91 FR 37096 (June 22, 2026):
| Deadline | Date |
|---|---|
| Verification documents to the school (V1) | The earlier of 120 days after your last date of enrollment or September 18, 2027 |
| Corrections received by the Department | September 11, 2027 |
| FAFSA received by the FAFSA Processing System | June 30, 2027 |
Read those in order and notice the trap. The corrections deadline falls a week before the document deadline. And the AVG says verification is complete only when the school has all the requested documentation and a valid ISIR or FAFSA Submission Summary, “including any necessary corrections, which must be made by the Federal Register deadlines.” So handing in your last document on September 15 does not save you if it produces a correction that misses September 11.
Your school’s own deadline is usually earlier, and it governs you. Footnote 3 of Table A in the notice is the affirmative rule: a school “may establish an earlier deadline for the submission of verification documents for purposes of the Campus-Based programs and the Direct Loan Program, but it cannot be later than this deadline date.”
Miss it and the consequences split:
- Miss the school’s timeframe: the AVG, under the heading 34 CFR 668.60, says your school cannot disburse more FSEOG, cannot employ you or permit further Work-Study, and cannot “originate or disburse any additional Direct Loans (subsidized, unsubsidized, or PLUS).” FSEOG you already received that year must be repaid. Worth knowing: the regulation’s own text is narrower than the Handbook’s here, naming only Direct Subsidized Loans, but your aid office administers the Handbook.
- Miss the federal deadline: you forfeit the Federal Pell Grant for the award year and must return any Pell already received for it.
One piece of good news that is worth a phone call: if you submit late to your school but are still inside the federal window, the AVG says the school “may, at your discretion, provide aid if still within the Department’s overall verification deadlines.” It is discretionary, not automatic, which is exactly why you ask instead of assuming.
Two more mechanics specific to V1:
- Signatures cannot be collected later. The AVG requires that any needed signatures, on worksheets or on copies of tax returns, be collected at the time of verification and not after that award year’s verification deadline. Electronic signatures are fine when the process assures the identity of the signer, typically a PIN or password issued after identity authentication.
- V1 has a disbursement carve-out no other group has. For a student selected for V1 who is eligible for both subsidized and unsubsidized aid, a school may, case by case and with proper documentation, disburse Direct Unsubsidized and PLUS loans before a delayed V1 is completed. If the student never completes V1, the AVG says the student may keep that loan aid. One caveat the AVG attaches: if the school determines the student was not eligible when the aid was received, the return-of-funds rules apply instead. Separately, at its own discretion, a school may make one Pell and FSEOG disbursement for the first payment period, permit Work-Study for the first 60 consecutive days, and originate but not disburse a Direct Subsidized Loan. If an interim Pell or FSEOG disbursement becomes an overpayment after verification, the school is liable, the student does not owe a Title IV overpayment, and the school must not report one to NSLDS or refer it for collection.
Two exclusions are worth knowing. A confined or incarcerated student selected for V1 does not have to complete verification at all, per the AVG, which keys this to the incarcerated applicant flag on the record. Such a student selected for V4 or V5 is only required to verify identity.
And under 34 CFR 668.54(b), a school need not verify a parent’s information if the parents live abroad and cannot be contacted by normal means, if they cannot be located because their contact information is unknown and the student cannot obtain it, or if both parents are mentally incapacitated. The list for an independent student’s spouse is separate and slightly wider: deceased, mentally incapacitated, living abroad and uncontactable, or unlocatable. Note that death appears on the spouse list, not the parent list. Either way, the exclusion applies unless the school has reason to believe the reported information is incorrect.
Finally, order of operations. If your income dropped since you filed, you cannot run a special-circumstances appeal alongside a verification hold. 34 CFR 668.53(c) requires an applicant selected for verification to complete it before the school exercises professional judgment authority. Finish V1, then file the Professional Judgment appeal. More on the clock in verification deadlines and timeline, and on the failure path in what happens if verification is not completed.
Is verification aid year specific?
Yes. Selection attaches to one award year’s FAFSA, and nothing you did for a prior year satisfies this one. Five sourced pieces make that concrete:
- The item list is republished annually. 34 CFR 668.56(a) publishes the verifiable information “For each award year,” so what you had to prove last year is not automatically what you have to prove now.
- The relief from re-documenting is award-year bounded. 34 CFR 668.54(a)(4) excuses re-documentation only “for the applicable award year,” and only to the extent the information is unchanged. Within the same year, the AVG adds that applicants selected for verification are not required to re-document family size in a later verification if nothing changed.
- The flag rides every transaction inside that year. Once the Department selects a FAFSA for verification, the AVG says “every subsequent transaction for that award year, even one resulting from PJ, will indicate that the student is selected.”
- A correction can pull you in. The AVG states it directly: “If a FAFSA that is not selected for verification is later corrected, that can result in the application being selected.” The Department’s Program Integrity Q&A gives the mechanism, that “the corrected record will be reassessed in the verification selection process.” A correction properly flagged as professional judgment is not reassessed.
- Even the transfer-student escape hatch is per year. The AVG’s exclusion covers a student who “completed verification for the current award year at another school before transferring,” with identical FAFSA data and a letter from the prior school giving the transaction number.
For V4 and V5 specifically, identity results are reported per award year, and the AVG says “the most recent submission will supplant prior award year submissions.” There is exactly one published cross-year carve-out: GEN-25-10 says schools need not reverify a confined or incarcerated student’s identity as long as they stay enrolled at the same institution at the same correctional facility and had identity previously verified under V4 or V5.
What this does not tell you is whether being selected once makes you more or less likely to be selected again. The Department does not publish its selection criteria, and nothing in the Handbook, the notice, GEN-25-10, or the Q&A speaks to it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.
When your school asks for something the federal rules do not require
Think of the published V1 list as the floor and your school’s request as potentially higher.
The ceiling is real. The AVG says a school “must verify any information you have reason to believe is incorrect,” and may “at your discretion, require a student to verify any FAFSA information and provide reasonable documentation according to consistently applied school policies.” Your FAFSA Submission Summary already warns you: the AVG describes an asterisk next to the SAI and a comment telling the student the school has authority to ask for additional documentation. Schools also are not required to use the Department’s suggested text and may build their own forms, which is exactly why two colleges’ V1 worksheets can look nothing alike. They may not put the Department of Education seal on them.
But there are three published limits, and each one is worth quoting back.
1. A school cannot hold your federal aid over an item with no Title IV bearing. The AVG allows delayed disbursement for a school-selected item only when it “can affect the student’s Title IV eligibility.” It then says flatly: “schools cannot delay disbursing Title IV funds when the item has no bearing on Title IV aid,” using home equity on a primary residence as its example, since that value is excluded from assets in the SAI formula. Number in college is the current live case of the same shape.
2. A school may request a transcript instead of a signed return, but not require one without cause. The Program Integrity Q&A is direct: “An institution may request a copy of a tax return transcript in lieu of a signed copy of an income tax return but not require it.” If the school has concerns about the return’s validity it may require the transcript, and it “must document the reason why the income tax return was not acceptable.”
3. A school’s deadline may be earlier than the federal one, never later. That is footnote 3 of 91 FR 37096.
So the script when a request looks unfamiliar is short, and it is not confrontational:
“Is this item federally required for V1, or is it an institutional requirement? And if it is institutional, is any federal aid being held while I complete it?”
Those two questions separate a real V1 requirement from a school worksheet built off stale regulation text, and they force the disbursement question into the open. Ask them in writing, through the financial aid office’s own portal, and keep the reply.
For a personalized list built from your group and tax situation, the free Verification Tracking-Group Decoder turns your details into a checklist and the controlling deadline in about 30 seconds. And for the full document map across every group, see what documents you need for FAFSA verification.
Sources
- FSA Handbook 2026-2027, Application and Verification Guide, Chapter 4: Verification, Updates, and Corrections. The V1 item lists for tax filers and non-filers, the FA-DDX “considered verified” rule, the Form 1040 line chart, transcript and signed-return documentation, the rollover and foreign-income exceptions, family size rules and exemptions, joint filers, extensions, amended returns, identity theft, interim disbursements, signatures, deadlines, verification exclusions, and school-selected verification.
- FSA Handbook 2026-2027, Application and Verification Guide, Chapter 2: Filling Out the FAFSA Form. Number in college at student question 10 and parent question 35, why the question remains on the form, and that it is not used to calculate the SAI.
- Dear Colleague Letter GEN-25-10, 2026-27 Award Year: FAFSA Information to be Verified and Acceptable Documentation (Nov. 26, 2025). Schools not required to collect a transcript or signed return when FTI transferred and was used, and the identity reverification carve-out for confined or incarcerated students. The V1 exemption for confined or incarcerated students is quoted above from AVG Chapter 4.
- GEN-25-10, Appendix A: 2026-2027 Suggested Verification Text (PDF). The four ways to request a 2024 IRS Tax Return Transcript, the Return Transcript versus Account Transcript warning, the identity-theft documentation, and the family size definition excluding unborn children.
- Dear Colleague Letter, FAFSA Simplification Act Changes for Implementation in 2024-25 (Aug. 4, 2023). The removal of number of family members in college from the need analysis, including from the Income Protection Allowance.
- 34 CFR Part 668, Subpart E (eCFR). 668.53(b) and (c) on school notice duties and the verification-before-professional-judgment rule, 668.54 on exclusions and award-year scoping, 668.56 on the annual notice, 668.57 on acceptable documentation, 668.58 on interim disbursements, and 668.60 on deadline consequences.
- 2026-2027 Award Year Deadline Dates, 91 FR 37096 (June 22, 2026). The September 18, 2027 verification document deadline, the 120-day rule, the September 11, 2027 corrections deadline, the June 30, 2027 FAFSA deadline, and Table A footnote 3 allowing an earlier but never later school deadline.
- Program Integrity Questions and Answers, Verification (U.S. Department of Education). DS-A3 on requesting versus requiring a transcript, DOC-A10 on acceptable transcript types, and IVQ-A3 on corrections triggering reassessment for verification selection.
Editor’s note: 34 CFR Part 668, Subpart E has not been conformed to the FAFSA Simplification Act. It still uses EFC terminology and still contains documentation paragraphs for items, including number in college, that are no longer on the Department’s published verification list. Under 668.56(a) the annual Federal Register notice controls. Do not “correct” this page back toward the regulation’s leftover item text. Two divergences on this page are deliberate and verified: the Handbook bars all Direct Loans on a missed school timeframe while 668.60(b)(1)(i)(C) names only Direct Subsidized Loans, and 668.54(b) puts “deceased” on the spouse exclusion list only, never on the parent list.
Verified August 4, 2026 for the 2026-27 award year. This guide is informational and is not legal or financial advice.