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[sqygle]

sorry if it has been asked before but I couldn't find it on search.

I'm from the UK and graduated in 2009. My student loan repayments were due to start in April 2010 and the Student Loan Company promptly sent a letter to my dads address (he's my guarantor) asking for money or for evidence of what I am doing and what income I am living off. I told them I was travelling and volunteering for the next year and that was fine but I'm sure they will be back.

Just wonder what other teachers do regarding their student loan repayments because the SLC were very keen on chasing me up. My understanding is if you work abroad you are supposed to declare your foreign income for assessment and pay anything owed if earning above the minimum threshold, which I think is determined depending on the cost of living in your country of employment (I think).

It sounds like a complicated process to organise from abroad and I'm sure many don't. So my question is how do you deal with the SLC or do you avoid them?

[bulgogiboy]

All post 1998 loans are supposed to be automatically deducted from your salary and given directly to HMRC, if you work in the UK. This is assuming you are over the threshold of �15k per annum. They may say there is a set date when you are 'expected' to start making repayments, but this is not in the same sense as a normal loan. If you are earning under �15k then you won't be expected to make any payments. This can carry on for years, if you find yourself stuck in a job paying under that amount. I saw David Cameron himself say that if people never go over the threshold then they will never have to pay it back. With the salaries most employers in the UK seem to be offering I can easily see this happening for a lot of people!

I graduated in 2002 and have never had any letters from the SLC demanding money. If you work abroad you can declare income to them if you want to (you're supposed to) but if you don't, how will they know you're abroad? They aren't MI5.

It used to be that the threshold varied depending on the country you were in, which probably reflected the amount of disposable income you would have within places like Korea, etc, despite not being over �15k a year.
If you aren't sure about what's expected of you, and you want to make repayments, just get in touch with them and ask them. If you'd rather keep your money for now, just keep hush.

[sqygle]

Lucky you I know the SLC is not the best run organisation but i think before i started my course they changed the rules and tried to tighten things up because so many loans were not being repaid. For example they used to be written off after Xnumber of years, not any more.

I definitely wont be chasing them to pay up and i'll keep my fingers crossed that they lose my file but they have two relatives on record as my guarantors and they wanted to know if i was either working in the UK(with proof of salary), unemployed in the UK (with proof of income, benefits etc), or working abroad.

anyone else had this or is it just me? even they might smell a rat if I keep 'travelling and volunteering' for the next 5 years without an income

[riverboat]

I graduated in 2004 and started working full time in London, earning over the threshold immediately, and had payments deducted from my salary in the normal way. This continued for 5 or 6 years, then I left my job and came to France. I didn't notify the SLC, and didn't hear anything from them for a year. Then, after a year they sent a letter to my parents' house (which was my address during my studies and I never bothered updating it with them) saying that I had to let them know immediately what I was doing, if I was working abroad or freelance or whatever, otherwise they had the right to demand that I pay the loan back in full immediately.

Now I have no idea to what extent this was an idle un-enforcable threat or how exactly they could prove whether I was working abroad or just dossing around abroad. But anyway, as it happened I'd earnt under the threshold of �15,000 in my first year of work in France and had the payslips to show this (though for all the SLC knew I was doing privates on the side) so photocopied all of these for them and sent a letter explaining. I also sent a copy of the new contract I'd just signed for a full-time job in France earning over the threshold, and drew their attention to the page where it stated the salary. The contract was in French obviously, so who knows if they have a team of translators there ro what. They eventually wrote back and said I had to make payments of �11 per month, and I just set up a direct debit from my UK bank account (can't do it from a foreign account). Not really that much hassle, and I'd rather just do it than try to shirk it and worry about the albeit tiny risk that somehow they'd be able to enforce their threat of demanding full repayment of the loan on the grounds of me having broken the terms and conditions by failing to update them on my activities.

[Dedicated]

You are supposed to fill out an Overseas Income Assessment Form (which you can download from the website www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk.

Every year, the SLC will automatically send you a reassessment form and letter (via your guarantor) on the assumption that you remain overseas.
There are different threshold levels for different countries, though the UK, Australia and Canada are �15,000.

Check out all the details on www.direct.gov.uk
However, I doubt you can escape.....and your guarantor can be made to repay the whole amount.

[Mike_2007]

They've sent me a letter every year for the last...hmm...17 years. It's a one-page, two-sided form where you fill in my income (salary, benefits, whatever) and/or a letter from your employer stating your monthly salary for the current month and likely salary for the next three months. You send it back and, assuming you're earning less than the minimum for repayments, the loan gets deferred for another year. After 25 years it gets wiped.

[Vecchia]