On your parents’ 2024 Form 1040, adjusted gross income sits on Line 11, and the figure the FAFSA calls “income tax paid” is on Line 24, labeled “Total tax.” Those are the two numbers you’re looking for. The 2026–2027 FAFSA uses the 2024 return your parents filed in early 2025, so make sure you’re working from that year’s 1040 and not an older one.
Most families never type these numbers into the FAFSA by hand. The form pulls them straight from the IRS through the FUTURE Act Direct Data Exchange (FA-DDX) once every contributor consents. But you still need to know where the figures live: schools sometimes select applications for verification, the CSS Profile asks for manual entry, and an amended return can force a reconciliation with the aid office.
Line 24 Is the Income Tax Figure, Not Line 33 or Line 16
This is where families get tripped up, and picking the wrong line changes how much aid your parents’ return looks like it supports.
Line 24 shows the actual tax your parents owed for the year after all credits have been applied. That’s the number the FAFSA wants.
Two nearby lines cause most of the confusion:
- Line 16 shows the base tax calculated on taxable income before credits like the child tax credit or education credits are subtracted. It’s usually larger than Line 24.
- Line 33, “Total payments,” adds up everything your parents sent to the IRS during the year: withholding from Line 25a, quarterly estimated payments from Line 26, and refundable credits. If your parents had too much withheld, Line 33 will be bigger than Line 24, and the difference is their refund.
Reporting Line 33 instead of Line 24 would overstate the tax your parents actually owed and could reduce the aid offered. When in doubt, the “Total tax” line — Line 24 — is the one that matters for federal financial aid.
Line 11: Adjusted Gross Income
AGI is the number the aid formula leans on most heavily. It captures all of your parents’ taxable income (wages, investment earnings, business profits, retirement distributions) minus a handful of “above-the-line” adjustments taken before the standard or itemized deduction is applied. Those adjustments include student loan interest, contributions to certain retirement accounts, and the deduction for self-employment tax.
On the 2024 Form 1040, the arithmetic runs like this: Line 9 shows total income, Line 10 shows total adjustments from Schedule 1, and Line 11 (AGI) is Line 9 minus Line 10. If your parents had straightforward W-2 income with no adjustments, Line 9 and Line 11 will match.
A quick example: if a parent earned $95,000 in wages and claimed a $3,000 student loan interest deduction, Line 11 would read $92,000. That $92,000 is the AGI that flows into the FAFSA’s need analysis.
One edge case: if business or farm losses drive AGI below zero, the FAFSA treats negative AGI as zero. A school that sees a $0 AGI will almost certainly flag the application for verification and ask how the family covers living expenses, so have documentation ready.
Why You Might Need to Look These Up at All
Starting with the 2024–2025 cycle, the FAFSA replaced the old IRS Data Retrieval Tool with the FA-DDX. Every contributor on the FAFSA — the student, each parent, and any spouse — must consent to let the Department of Education pull their federal tax information directly from the IRS. When everyone consents, the income and tax figures transfer automatically and are considered verified for federal aid purposes.
Consent is mandatory. If even one required contributor declines, the FAFSA cannot calculate a Student Aid Index, and the student loses eligibility for federal grants and loans. The old option of skipping the data tool and typing numbers by hand is gone.
Even with automatic transfer, three situations put you back on the 1040:
- Your school selects the FAFSA for verification and asks you to confirm what the FA-DDX transferred.
- You’re filing the CSS Profile or another institutional aid application, which requires manual entry of tax figures.
- Your parents filed an amended return after the FA-DDX pulled data, and you need the corrected 1040 to sort things out with the aid office.
When FA-DDX data was successfully transferred, a school generally cannot require an IRS Tax Return Transcript on top of that, since the transferred data is already considered verified. Transcripts come into play mainly when the transfer didn’t work, when an amended return was filed, or when the school spots a discrepancy.
If Your Parents Did Not File a Return
Some parents aren’t required to file a federal return, usually because their gross income fell below the IRS filing threshold for their filing status. In that case there is no Line 11 or Line 24 to report. The W-2 becomes the primary income document: Box 1 shows total taxable wages, and Box 2 shows federal income tax withheld during the year.
The FA-DDX handles non-filers too. When a parent consents and the IRS has no record of a filed return, that non-filing status transfers automatically. If verification is required and the automatic transfer didn’t resolve things, your parents can request a Verification of Nonfiling letter through their IRS Individual Online Account or by submitting Form 4506-T by mail.
Non-filer families sometimes assume they can skip the tax section of the FAFSA. They can’t. The income section still needs answers, and the FA-DDX consent step is still mandatory. The IRS will simply report back that no return was filed, and that itself is a data point the formula uses.