Join us on Thursday, July 23, from 1:00-3:00 MDT/2:00-4:00 CDT for this second webinar presented by Robert Weinerman from Iron Bridge Resources: Who Must File a Tax Return and What is the Correct Filing Status for a Person? Can't make it that day? Register anyway for access to the recorded version!

The Application and Verification Guide tells us that financial aid administrators (FAAs) are “obligated to know” two things about the tax code: “(1) whether a person was required to file a tax return and (2) what the correct filing status for a person should be.” In this webinar, we will look at when an FAA might need to deal with these issues, and how they can address them. 

We will start by looking at the data that FAAs may have that will allow them to determine if someone who has stated they have not filed a tax return is in fact required to file one. This discussion will include a look at how both gross income and earned income can trigger a filing requirement, and unusual situations where high income people are not required to file.

In the discussion of filing status, we will focus on when a married person can use the head of household filing status, and why so many married people try to use it even when they are not allowed to do so. We will also look at how to address married taxpayers who use the single status, and whether or not two unmarried adults who share a home can somehow both use the head of household filing status.

Robert Weinerman began his financial aid career in 1993 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having served two years as an admissions counselor and four as a victim advocate for LGBT victims of hate crimes and domestic violence. As an aid officer, Robert quickly became the tax return specialist, handling the applications with business and real estate tax returns and training his colleagues how to use tax returns to effectively identify unreported income and assets. After a decade at MIT, Babson, and several smaller Boston area schools, Robert moved on to College Coach, where he led a team of former financial aid administrators who provided guidance to parents of children of all ages as they prepared to save for, or pay for College.
 
In 2014, Robert was approached by the New Hampshire Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, who were looking for someone to do a tax training for their members. Robert took on this project, which was successful, and began to transition from College Coach to providing tax training for financial aid administrators full time across New England. In 2015, Jim Briggs, who had been doing training for aid officers for thirty years and was looking to retire, selected Robert to take over his business, and Robert has been training aid administrators about all the things they need to know about taxes ever since.