A Fumble on a Key Fafsa Tool, and a Failure to Communicate

To get aid for college from federal or state governments, as well as from colleges, students and their parents must fill out the Fafsa (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). The notoriously complicated form, which is longer than the typical 1040 tax form, collects detailed information from students and families about income, expenses and taxes.

On March 3, families logging onto the website for federal aid found that a key component of the online application had stopped functioning. The component, known as the Data Retrieval Tool, automatically fills in a Fafsa application with information from an applicant’s tax return, via a data connection with the Internal Revenue Service. Without the tool, applicants have to transcribe tax information from their old returns or order tax transcripts from the IRS (which can take several weeks). Six days later, the Department of Education and the I.R.S. jointly released a statement saying that the IRS had “decided to temporarily suspend the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) as a precautionary step following concerns that information from the tool could potentially be misused by identity thieves.” The agencies declined to elaborate, and it was unclear whether a breach had occurred or had only been feared.