A number of higher education institutions have recently received notices from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposing penalties against the institutions for failure to include social security numbers on Form 1098-T. Regardless of whether your institution has already received an IRS notice, it is our understanding the IRS will continue to send out these penalty notifications. Therefore, we encourage all educational institutions to review their internal compliance procedures in attempting to solicit social security numbers from students. Efforts to solicit social security numbers in a “responsible manner” will assist in convincing the IRS to waive any proposed penalties.

To view a National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) report, released on October 1, 2013, providing additional detail regarding these IRS penalty notices, please click here.