Why in the EFC pages is it asking for income from 2018 for an start year of 2022?

Currently, no one is able to work on a FAFSA for the start year of 2022-2023 and the FAFSA application will open up on Oct.1, 2021. An official FAFSA submission creates the only EFC that colleges use to determine financial aid in the form of PELL GRANTS and other Federal Aid.

So whatever you are working on is not a real FAFSA form that creates an official EFC report. Perhaps you are using a 3rd party EFC calculator but that is not been calibrated properly for the following 2022-23 academic figures. I wouldn't trust it.

If you are filling out the FAFSA on the official site for the academic year 2021-2022, you are required to provide your parents 2019 income and financial records. There is always a 2-year lag. So for the academic year 2022-23 you will only be required to put in your income and your parents income for 2020, not 2018.

If you go to the official FAFSA website you can verify what I have written here.

https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa

Good luck