Be Excellent To Each Other

I need a sense check here to see if what I'm about to describe is common knowledge that's passed me by, or is in fact an incredible fucking oversight that demonstrates mind-boggling incompetence on the part of the HMRC and the Student Loans Company.

On my recent SLC annual statement, I noticed my total repayment figure stated for the year was very low, about half of what it should have been. Looking at my P60 I can see that the SLC payment figure my employer has stated is also incorrect, and it's this information that been given to the SLC.

Then I realised I'd changed employers half-way through that year, and that my P60 only reflected payments from my new employer. Why not from the old employer? Turns out that while a P45 has a box that says 'Student Loan Repayments to continue', it has absolutely nothing to record the Student Loan repayments made to date in the financial year. Therefore the new employer has absolutely no information to pass on to the SLC at the end of the financial year, and this causes the discrepancy.

HMRC's website has a PDF describing what to do with Student Loan deductions and P45s, which you can see here.

Now, if you give that a read you'll see that the 'advice' given in this area is no advice at all. It admits that the P45 won't carry over any information to the new employer, and to refer any enquiries to the SLC. The ONLY thing it says in relation to this problem is that it's very important to keep your payslips and your P60.

This gives rise to the following scenario:



Now, who's at fault here?

New employer? They can only work with the information they're given on the P45. They haven't fucked up, because there's no way for them to know what you've paid.

Old employer? They have no way of conveying what you've paid in the financial year to date. They can specify the tax you've paid, which is fine (except it's not, for reasons I'll come to shortly), but there's no box for 'SLC payments'.

SLC? They can only work with what they're given on the P60. They're too stupid to be able to reconcile what they've actually received via HMRC for you, so they're entirely reliant on your employer telling them on a piece of paper once a year.

HMRC offer no advice, and if you don't realise, you're getting fuck fuckity fucked and there's nothing in place to catch the discrepancy. Anyone reading this that has repaid a student loan after 1998, and has changed employers at any point thereafter has almost certainly been fucked over in this way.

The ONLY way to fix this is to realise yourself, manually reconcile all of your payslips against your P60 (assuming you kept them), and send them as evidence to the SLC. They may then eventually update your record to reflect your true payments. I'm guessing that's the next step, but I haven't got that far yet.

I cannot find anything about this potentially enormous problem anywhere, leading me to believe that I've somehow got this all wrong. If I'm not wrong, why isn't there a gigantic klaxon going off somewhere to alert people to this problem? You could have overpaid thousands of pounds in student loan payments and never have realised.

Tonight I've gone back over payslips, P60s, and student loan statements for the last three years. I've been caught by both of my job changes in that time and I've actually paid off far more of my loan than the SLC is aware of.

See, what it is is, students are thieving freeloading scum, and should be shafted at every opportunity possible re their loans, so as to teach them a lesson re the realities of the world.

SLC take forever to change anything and do require proof. I didn't change company mind.

One year my company did send them the correct paper work, I still paid them a fortune and they still managed to ignore the fact I'd paid a whole years worth of payments. This still took 6 months to correct.

Also
In April last year I'd finish paying off my loan. However it took until December(or something) for them to send the correct notice to stop the taxman taking the payment from my salary. It also took 6 phone calls to mostly inept tards to get to this point. I'm still waiting for my over payments to be returned.

If you can move your payments to Direct debit I think I would. although no doubt you'll end up paying twice anyway. They then have the correct records at the end of your term.

The problem they have is everything is only declared once a year to the taxman and then the taxman has to remember to send that info to them. So they are always a year behind with the info or don't get it at all and they have to process the forms which don't get released for a few months after the tax year. They therefore only really have access to your documents as evidence in the mean time, assuming you kept them in the first place. Complete and utterly awful setup.


Anyway I'm pretty sure in your case you last company should still have to have declared what you had paid and the current company should have had to too. But as they're so slow and probably not setup well to handle slightly normal or complicated cases you'll probably need to send them all the pay slips and p60's for the years in question but for the love of god photocopy them before you send them.

Comical earns £100k pa? Christ, there's more money in novelty websites than I thought.

It's not really about the SLC reconciling anything, it's purely about the information the HRMC provides to the SLC. The SLC never sees any actual payment and works entirely on what the HMRC says they've been given, and HMRC are genuinely fucking idiots about the entire thing so the information the SLC receives is all kinds of fucked. In any situation that people have over-paid/under-paid/whatever you can be 99% sure that HMRC have fucked up and given bad info to the SLC. I mean, the situation itsallwater describes where you over-pay in your last year happens to every single student who gets to that stage because the SLC literally doesn't know when to stop taking money from them due to only getting your repayment info once a year from the HMRC. It's head-slappingly ludicrous and various moves have been made over the years to try and ensure that proper real time data can be provided from HMRC about your repayments but all have failed because the HMRCs systems are so utterly, utterly shite that it's just not possible to hook into them and do anything useful. Essentially the entirety of the HMRCs operation is a fucking disgrace and until they internally sort their systems and business processes out student loan repayers will continue to get fucked over and out.

Haha, I wish. That's just an example.

It's not so much that this problem could happen, it's that it definitely will happen every time anyone changes job. It's a known flaw which they admit to (although not in those terms), and offer absolutely no advice as to fixing it. It's left to the individual to notice themselves, and battle themselves to have it corrected. That is the most shocking aspect of it.

I'll remember this, should I change jobs. THNX.

Just do what I did and abscond to the Isle of Man, leaving a trail of bad debts behind you, including student loans.

This worked really well until me and Mrs AE got married, and then one year on the form from the SLC Mrs AE named me as her partner on there for some reason or another (to get out of paying, or to pay less, or something).

About a week later I got a letter from the SLC that came very close to saying 'HA! WE'VE FOUND YOU, THIEVING SCUM, GIVE US THREE AND A HALF GRAND IN SEVEN DAYS OR WE'LL HAVE YOUR ARSE IN COURT'.

I paid them.

It's just occured to me there may be one other way to fix this without going through the rigmarole of harassing the SLC with your payslips.

The only other thing which can trigger an update to the SLC (and generate an 'interim' statement) is the submission of a Self-Assessment (which will included the details of your P60 from your employment) or some other tax-based activity. If you can get your accountant to see your logic, he'll submit the corrected figures on your behalf, and the HMRC will grind its cogs and send out an update to the SLC.

MAYBE. I'm about to have my accountant submit my SA for the tax year in question, so I'll see if this is a possible route to success.

Trouble is most people won't be doing Self Assessment if they're just straight-up regular employed, so this won't be an option unless they specifically opt-in to do it.

My mother-in-law paid my student loan off in the year I graduated.

HTH HAND

Don't go to uni unless it's required for a definitive career path you want to follow.

HTH ETC

Does she also change your nappy when it's full?

OH SICK BURN/NAPPY RASH.

I shouldn't return to the uk then

I thought I heard somewhere that if you stay out of the country for a certain period, the loan is written off - is this bullshit?

I started uni in 1999. I'd paid off about half when I left the country two years ago. When I inquired about moving out of the UK, they said they'd like 10% of my overseas salary. So I just left without filling in any of the forms. It may not be my best ever move, and maybe I should get around to trying to pay it off.

It's if you reach a certain age and its not paid off that they'll write it off. I don't know what happens if you're actively repaying it when you get to that age through.

I got my statement today. Last year, I apaprently paid £28 off, and had interest of £53. Which is strange, as I remember each week looking at my pay slips and thinking "there's another tenner off the loan, then". I guess I'll have to do some chasing. Thanks for this, EBG, you've created more admin work for me (I need a P60 from the DWP, which should be hilarious, as I love dealing with them).

Remember that your statement will be a whole year out of date. Probably covers April '10 -'11

I tend to just look at it and throw it away. I'll cehck when I return home.

I thought that was only Australians?

I don't know what you mean, but the info about the write-off terms is here.

65! Bastards!

I know, imagine not giving you all that money for free! Those fucks!

They just grab hold of your tit and keep squeezing, man.

It would be fairer than being allowed to doss about for three years at the tax-payers' expense, paying it back at a ridiculously low interest rate over a pointlessly long period.

I'll have you know that I worked during uni! 10 hours a week! For minimum wage! That I spent on beer! And Pizza!

The government's sort of got you covered there, the new loan repayment terms (meaninglessly called 'Plan 2') are more punitive than the previous set due to The Browne Review and, y'know, Tories. So, for instance, people with a loan they took out before (I think) 2013 will currently be on an APR of 1.5%. Anyone taking out a loan after that would be on an APR of 8.3%. The APR for your Plan 2 guys changes depends on circumstance (whether you're currently studying, whether you keep in touch with the SLC, what your salary is) but it's always at least equal to the RPI for the current year.