Parent Farm Documentation

Parent/Mother/Father

This document is listed as required because either you indicated on your HLS Main Online Institutional Application that your parent/mother/father household had ownership in a farm OR when we reviewed your parent/mother/father Federal Form 1040 we saw a farm listed on their schedule F. If you feel this document is listed in error, please contact our office.  

If you are applying for HLS need-based grant assistance and your parents own or have a percentage of ownership in a farm, then you are required to submit all corresponding Federal tax documentation for this farm to HLS Student Financial Services. Understanding the financial circumstances of farms is a critical component of our ability to make accurate, complete and fair determinations of need-based aid eligibility to our students. We recognize that we require a lot of detailed information from families who are involved in farms. It is often an involved process for us to build a fair and complete picture of your farm activity. This process usually requires a lot of back and forth between our staff and parents as we review data and need to ask frequent follow up questions to make sure we are processing the information we are reviewing correctly. Past experience has shown us that no two farms are the same and there are few universals that can be applied to all farms uniformly. Our primary goals through this process are twofold:

1. We want to get an in-depth understanding of the recent and current cash flow within all farms in which your parents are involved, and;
2. We want to arrive at an appropriate and fair net worth in today's dollars for all farms in which your parents are involved. We appreciate your help and patience as we work hard to try and get the data we need to offer you the best and fairest aid package possible.

Step-parents

HLS requires farm data from both biological parents and from step-parents if a biological parent has remarried. If the farm in question is the primary activity of the step-parent, we will not use the income generated from this farm in the determination of your eligibility for need based aid since we do not include step-parents' income in our analysis. However we still need to collect tax data on these farms because we do factor the net worth of all parental assets including the net worth of any farm into our determination of your eligibility for aid. For biological parents that have remarried we compile total net worth and then divide it in half to remove the 50% that belongs to the step-parent from our eligibility calculation.

Student

Although generally not automatically required, should a student be selected to participate in either the Federal Verification process or our internal Institutional Verification process, we may require the STUDENT, themselves, to submit information about any farms in which they, themselves, might have an interest. Should this situation arise, we will notify the student via email of this requirement.

Complete documentation entails (for EACH farm):

Farm Sole Proprietorship (files Federal Tax Form 1040 Schedule F). Note: If you have a financial interest in a farm that files an 1120, 1120S or 1065 you will need fill out the corresponding Business/Farm Web Form for the specific business type.

• A Signed copy of all U.S. Federal tax forms which pertains to EACH Farm owned. Depending on how the particular farm is set up for tax purposes, this could include one or more the following:
  • Form 1040, Schedule F (for Farms set up as Sole Proprietorships).
  • From 1120 (for Farms set up as C-Corporations) - include all schedules and statements.
  • Form 1120S and K-1s (for Farms set up as S-Corporations) - include all schedules, statements and K1's.
  • Form 1065 K-1 (for Farms set up as Partnerships)
• A submission of the Business/Farm Web Form (1040 SchC Businesses/1040 SchF Farms) for EACH Farm Owned.
• If, upon receipt, we determine that your parents' Farm Documentation is not complete (i.e. missing any of the items listed above), you will see this document listed as "Incomplete" on the "Documents" tab of My HLS Financial Aid. Once you provide all of the missing pieces, we will update the document status to "Received".