Student Loan

ceej606

Hi! I was wondering if anyone had any information at all that may help me?

I have been working now for 5 years and I haven't paid any money off on my student loan yet, they just haven't caught up with me and to be honest i forgot all about it.
Should I inform them? and if I do will they want lots of money up front? Im scared as i may get into trouble and financially im not that well off as it is! Has anyone else been in the same situation?

Any help/opinions would be appreciated!!!

Thanks!

MrsManda

Are you earning £15,000? Do you pay your tax via PAYE? Have you kept the SLC informed of change of address etc?
If you are working for the same employer you worked for after graduating the payroll department should've recieved a Start Notice from the HMRC to say you are eligible to repay your student loans. If you've moved jobs since then your P45 should've had a tick in the student loans box to inform your new employer they should take student loan repayments from you.

The best thing for you to do is to contact the SLC and tell them that you think you should be paying back your loans but that your employer hasn't been taking any repayments. They'll contact the HMRC to get a Start Notice sent your employer's payroll department for payments to begin. Details on how to contact the SLC are found on their website here

ceej606

Yeah i have been earning over 15,000 and paying PAYE for the past 5 years. hence why I am now worried i may get into trouble with them. Do you think that they may penalise me for this when i do contact them? My employer didnt take any repayments at all. thanks for your reply manda

Lokolo

Would you rather them catch you, or you own up and start paying?

One is likely to have less consequences!

Fiddlestick

ceej606 wrote: »

Yeah i have been earning over 15,000 and paying PAYE for the past 5 years. hence why I am now worried i may get into trouble with them. Do you think that they may penalise me for this when i do contact them?

I don't know if they will penalise you, but you owe the backdated payments and you are continuing to increase the arrears for each month you fail to sort this out.

The best thing to do is to contact them and find out how far in arrears you are and come to some sort of arrangement to pay,

My employer didnt take any repayments at all.

I'm afraid it's YOUR responsibility to ensure that your employer does this. If they don't then it's YOU who are ultimately responsible, not your employer.

Just give the SLC and HMRC a call as you are best sorting this out now before they catch up with you further down the line.

missworks2jobs

I never earned enough in my first job to pay student loan, but I changed jobs for better pay (over £15k) and started paying it, I got another job and another pay rise....but my previous employer never ticked the student loans box so i've not paid any at my newest job and i'd been there about 2years! I queried it with the payroll lady who said to contact the student loans or tax office cos she cant do anything without authorisation from them.

I sat worrying and worrying about it, I have also changed name when I got married and moved address and was worried incase they got in touch with me and demanded a fortune.

So I rang them up and said how I hadn't had a statement off them in ages and think they may still have all my old details....so I told them all my details and just explained "I dont think my last employer ticked the right box on my p45, and think I should be re-paying my loan in my new job".

They sent my employer a letter with instructions on how to take the deductions and they've been taking about £6 a week (i'm weekly paid) ever since, i'm on 18k so its a manageable amount. They didn't backdate anything or charge me anything...other than the interest over the years obviously. and now my statements come to the right address so I can see how much is left.

Mine was a Sept 98-July 2001 loan, but I only got student loan for the first 2 years and struggled with 3jobs to pay my way in the final year. Its slowly going down but its probably still going to be ages before I pay it off!

So long as you tell them as soon as you realise (just say you were waiting for them to contact you so you had the address/phone number or that you assumed they'd be able to trace you through your national insurance No) and when you realised that wasn't happening you started actively trying to pay them back (by the phonecall you're going to make).