The proposed regulations will revise the verification process. Updating information will be expanded to include the updating of a student's marital status during the award year, which under the current regulations is prohibited. The proposed regulations would decrease the number of items to be verified, from the current five required to an average of three data elements as selected on an individual basis. We propose to accept information that has been retrieved directly from the IRS and unchanged by the applicant. The proposed regulations eliminate the verification tolerances and require that all data changes be transmitted to the Department to insure that our systems contain correct data.
US Code:
20 USC 1001 et seq
Name of Law: Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended
PL: Pub.L. 110 - 315 485(a)(6) Name of Law: Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008
The increase of 612,000 burden hours is due to a statutory change in the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) (Pub. L. 110-315) (Section 485(a)(6)) made to the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA) that authorizes the Secretary to work in cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in order for an individual to retrieve his or her financial information from the IRS consistent with the regulations at 34 CFR 668.57(a)(3). This information retrieval directly from the IRS, if unchanged by the applicant, will be accepted as verified information. The remaining increase of 3,079,550 burden hours is a result of programmatic changes to prevent and combat fraud, waste and abuse, and align the regulations with enhancements made to the Federal Student Aid application processing system. The changes will revise the verification process to include collecting updated information about dependency status such as a studentÂs marital status during the award year. The regulation change will also decrease the number of items to be verified from the current five required data elements to an average of three data elements as selected on an individual basis. These regulation changes also eliminate the verification tolerances and require all data changes to be transmitted to the Department to ensure that applicant data in our system is correct.
$0
No
No
No
No
No
Uncollected
Dan Klock 202 377-4026
No
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that the collection of information encompassed by this request complies with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding the proposed collection of information, that the certification covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.