Method and apparatus for generating a financial aid application

摘要

A system that generates a financial aid application. During operation, the system determines whether a person has authorized access to a tax return belonging to the person for purposes of generating a financial aid application. If so, the system retrieves the tax return for the person, extracts information about the person from the tax return, and uses the extracted information to populate one or more fields in the financial aid application.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method that automatically populates tax return information into a financial aid application, comprising:
requesting, via a computer, a tax return of a first person using a first identifier of the first person wherein said first person is a dependent financial aid applicant; determining, based on a field in the tax return of the first person, that access to the tax return of the first person has been authorized by the first person for the purpose of generating a financial aid application;
based on said access to the tax return of the first person being authorized:retrieving, by the computer, the tax return of the first person from a database;extracting, by the computer, information about the first person from the retrieved tax return of the first person; andpopulating, by the computer, the extracted information about the first person into one or more fields of a financial aid application of the first person; determining, by the computer, a second identifier of a second person from the retrieved tax return of the first person; requesting, via the computer, a tax return of the second person using the determined second identifier; determining, based on a field in the tax return of the second person, that access to the tax return of the second person has been authorized by the second person for the purpose of generating a financial aid application;
based on said access to the tax return of the second person being authorized:retrieving, by the computer, the tax return of the second person from the database; determining that the retrieved tax return of the second person indicates that the first person is a dependent of the second person;
based on said indication:extracting, by the computer, information about the second person from the retrieved tax return of the second person; andpopulating, by the computer, the extracted information about the second person into further one or more fields of the financial aid application of the first person.