ED Announces FAFSA Asset Calculation Issue and Resolution
By NASFAA Policy & Federal Relations Staff
In an electronic announcement (EA) released on Friday, the Department of Education (ED) identified and resolved an issue preventing assets from being included in the student aid index (SAI) and Pell Grant eligibility calculations for certain applicants on the 2025-26 and 2026-27 FAFSAs.
The issue impacted applications in which one contributor manually entered tax information, while another contributor transferred tax information directly from the IRS via the FUTURE Act Direct Data Exchange (FA-DDX), and their combined adjusted gross income (AGI) was near or exceeding the threshold for including assets. ED estimates 20,000 applications from 2025-26 and 2,700 from 2026-27 were impacted, and states that only “20% of forms that would have had a different SAI would have received a different Federal Pell Grant calculation, and those differences were small dollar amounts.”
A resolution to the issue was implemented on November 9, so all FAFSAs (for 2025-26 and 2026-27) submitted on or after that date were processed with the correct asset information.
The EA further details how records submitted prior to November 9 will be treated.
For 2025-26, no reprocessing will occur and, in most cases, no action is required “based on the error being on the FSA side.” However, if a student or institution makes a correction to an affected 2025-26 FAFSA – even if the correction is unrelated to assets – the record will be processed with the correct assets in the calculation, meaning the SAI and/or Pell Grant determination may change. In these cases, it is possible the updated SAI and/or Pell Grant determination would require adjustments to the student’s aid, including previously disbursed aid for the award year.
For 2026-27, ED has reprocessed all impacted records and flagged them with Reject Code 16 (“Adjusted SAI Calculation”). Schools must use the reprocessed FAFSA to determine the student’s Title IV aid eligibility. ED will email all students who had a change in SAI or Pell Grant eligibility based on this reprocessing.
Publication Date: 11/24/2025
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