The Department of Education Department has agreed to allow colleges and universities more flexibility to use as part of their verification procedures while the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) is unavailable. The DRT was shut down in March of this year after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) noticed suspicious activity related to the tool. That has created problems for students and their families who rely on the DRT for purposes of filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). To complete a 2016–17 and 2017–18 FAFSA, students should manually enter 2015 tax information from the tax return filed in 2016 (not the 2016 tax information used to file in 2017). They help applicants who normally would have used the IRS DRT to more easily complete the application process."

Source: Forbes April 26, 2017 18:33 UTC