It’s no secret that many students aren’t thrilled with NSU’s financial aid department, and after my latest experience, I don’t find that all too surprising.
Last week, when I went to get tax assistance for 2015, the tax preparer reviewed my tax information for 2014, as well, because I informed her that I have been making payments to the IRS, as my 2014 tax forms show that I owe a lot of money to the government based on my income. I’m no tax genius, but when the tax preparer showed me what was causing me to have to make these payments, I was shocked.
In 2014, NSU reported in their system that I received three semesters’ worth of scholarships, totaling more than $50,000. Because there was almost $25,000 in scholarship money that was not accounted for, it was reported as taxable income, as it appeared that I was pocketing this remaining money. This means that I now owe the government money for scholarships that I hadn’t even received in the tax year it was reported under, and despite NSU’s records, when I finally received it in 2015, I used it solely to pay for my education.
Out of the three scholarship amounts reported in those documents, I only received two of them in the 2014 tax year. I received one of them in 2015. I learned that, for tax purposes, one files scholarships depending on when the university distributes them, not when students receive them. So, even though I didn’t receive that scholarship money in 2014, the government has documentation saying that I did.
Every college students knows that money is tight. And as a financially independent student surviving on an income of less than $8,000 a year, food stamps, free food at events on campus and good friends who make sure I have something to eat every day, having to owe the government over $1,000 for a nonexistent income is absolutely horrifying. I don’t make nearly enough money to dish out an extra $1,000, and even though I have a payment plan set up that allows me to make smaller monthly payments, the whole situation could have been completely avoided if NSU had reported that specific term’s scholarships when I actually received them, not when it distributed them.
The real problem with this is that it seems to happen randomly to students. While I have talked to a lot of students who have the same problem, there are others who weren’t even aware that this happens. I don’t understand how some students can be penalized so harshly because NSU just so happened to apply a scholarship a few weeks before they should have.
Money isn’t all there is to life, but money drastically affects life. When something so small as listing the right time that I receive a scholarship affects my life in such a large and impactful way, I expect people to take that seriously. I have so much love for this university. Why can’t that love be reciprocated?
