Student Loan Payment - Zero Hour Contract

blisteringblue

Can't seem to find this answer anywhere? How do student loan payments work on weekly paid zero hour contracts.

OH is an agency teacher and normally only does a few hours a week so pays no tax etc as well under 11K a year.

Recently they have been covering for a sick lecturer and done a couple of full weeks. This week student loans have taken a payment? Surely it works off total gross pay and not simply a good weeks wage?

Herzlos

I think it's based on pay cycle. So if the threshold is £19k (from memory, don't quote my figures), divided by the pay frequency, so a monthy pay gives a threshold of 19,000/12=1583 , fortnightly means 19,000/26=730 and weekly means 19,000/52=365. Above the threshold you pay back 9%.


So if they are only a short pay cycle (weekly) and have a very good week/month/bonus, they could go over the threshold and have to pay the 9%. It sounds like this it what's happened: a couple of weeks at full-time hours could have bumped them over the threshold. I don't think there's any way to get it back if overpaid though.


Unless they are on a pre-98 mortgage style setup where I think they'd have fixed payments anyway.

PRAISETHESUN

My understanding of how this works is that if you have variable hours the tax man treats each pay cycle as if you were earning that amount every pay cycle and take tax/NI/student loan payments accordingly. Tax will average out over the entire tax year (so you may be eligible for a refund) but NI and student loans do not. So if you had a few bumper weeks that could put you over the threshold for having to make payments

System

blisteringblue wrote: »

Can't seem to find this answer anywhere? How do student loan payments work on weekly paid zero hour contracts.

When your weekly wage is over £480 in a week (plan 2) then you have a student loan payment deducted. This can over a year result in you making payments when you wouldn't have been eligible or overpaying. You can get it refunded at the end of the year.

Jami74

Tarambor wrote: »

When your weekly wage is over £480 in a week (plan 2) then you have a student loan payment deducted. This can over a year result in you making payments when you wouldn't have been eligible or overpaying. You can get it refunded at the end of the year.

This. I'm in the same position (weekly zero hour contract), sometimes the deadline is missed for my timesheet (not always my fault) and I end up getting paid two weeks at the same time, then get student finance deducted. It's a pain as I'm not expecting to earn over the threshold for payment this year.

It is easy to claim back, but you have to wait until after the end of the tax year. I recently did it for 2017, phoned them up and told them I had overpaid and they offered to refund it for me and it was in my account a few days later.

blisteringblue

OK thanks for the info that does make sense. It wasn't the end of the world but will follow it up once we get the P60 for the year.