lucieg

You know if anything changes...i.e. you do get a job you have to notify them and start making the repayments

jarman

When I spoke to the advisor at the SLC, I was told to fill in the Overseas Income Assessment form. The information on that form would let them know how much I should be paying over the current year, in my case I was unemployed at the time, so they wrote me back saying that I would have to pay nothing for the current year, and that they would send me the Overseas Income Assessment form in ten months, where I would fill it in, and that would tell me what I have to pay for next year.
I actually asked the person on the phone the question about if I got a job after I filled the form in, and they told me not to worry about it, and to wait until I get the form to fill in for next year.

lucieg

Well you're lucky I was told I had to let them know if I started earning again...saying that it's no biggie I may as well be paying it off if I can.

biscuitsandtea

The SLC are just a massive mess at the moment, ever since they tried to incorporate everything last year they've been running around like headless chickens and dropping the ball in supplying loans and collecting them alike.

danfolkestone

Never take any notice of what you are told by SLC's call centre. The letter with your assessment says in bold that you don't need to take any further action for a year. Ten months later, you then receive a letter threatening to charge you £196 per month as you haven't completed an assessment form for the next year, and failure to pay will result in legal action. Don't worry about that either - they send you the income assessment form one month after that, giving you ample time to return it for reassessment before the penalty payments come into force.

I've actually found it much easier to deal with them since leaving England. It's a straight forward transaction between you and the SLC. Under the PAYE system, you have no control over payments at all - HM Revenue and Customs acts as a go between with your employer and SLC to work it all out, resulting in ridiculous mistakes (such as deducting money from me but not paying it to the SLC until I made a formal complaint 3 years later). Best of all, when the loan is paid off, you can just stop paying. Under PAYE, you have to wait for HMRC to pass your payments to the SLC at the end of the tax year, then for the SLC to tell HMRC that you have paid it off the following winter, then for HMRC to issue a revised tax code and your employer to update the records. Then you have to claim back the overpayments.

I'm glad ElRico thinks that it's such a good system though.

*My loan is post-1998. Pre-98 mortgage style loans may have different rules.

danfolkestone

A word of advice for those filling in the income assessment form. If you have no income, having just emigrated, you will have to tell them how you are paying for living expenses.

One option is to say that you are living off savings. That requires you to send them bank statements to prove that you have savings that they consider to be sufficient for living for a year. To me, that is an unreasonable invasion of privacy. Moreover, if you are only living off savings for a couple of months after which you expect to be working, you may not have sufficient funds to support yourself for a full year, in which case your assessment may be rejected. So you have a form that you can't complete, and if you don't complete it you get charged £196 per month!

The other option is to say that you are being supported by a spouse or relative. The only evidence required is a letter from whoever will be supporting you.

*This applies to post 1998 loans. Pre-98 mortgage style loans may be different

danfolkestone

In my experience, they are no better nor worse than they have been at any other point in the past 12 years.

youngmimesofharlem

I can't say i'm that bothered about having to pay back my student loan. Despite assertions to the contrary on this thread I couldn't have gone and got 'on the job training' as a Molecular Biologist so University it had to be. Never mind, I had a great time and now i earn a good wage courtesy of my degrees and my massive brain.

Seen as I got loaded up with qualifications and promptly left Britain it would have been pretty bloody rich of me to take a load of grants for my university studies and then give Britain the Agincourt Salute. Britain would have paid for me to earn a good wage and I would be contributing precisely NOTHING back to return the investment in me. Loans are really the only way to go.

HOWEVER. The number of times I've gotten out of bed at 5am to begin another round of 'encounters' with the SLC that are about as productive as smashing my head off a paving stone is getting ridiculous.

I told them i was leaving the country. I receive threatening letters asking where I've gone culminating in $200 being added, then subtracted, then added again, then finally subtracted to my account for not telling them I'd left despite actually telling them I WAS leaving and then later that I HAD left.

Then they thought my payslips were 'per week' not 'per month' and that i was earning 160K a year and wanted thousands back off me. I explained ooohhh about 6 times that each payslip represented A MONTH'S PAY. Again and again and again I told them, pointing out the bit where it said 'January Pay' and the dates of the payment period. Again and again and again they refused to listen to me. Eventually i got a letter signed by our company accountants to say how much i earned and they finally relented.

I was due to start a payment schedule. I was on the home straight. No more 5am phone calls before a day at the lab. I was so close I could taste it.

And nothing....

My application (my application to pay them money?) is still in progress 4 months later.

DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN what was all the shouting and threatening for when you aren't even ready to take the freaking money we've just spent three MONTHS arguing about. If a thought for a MINUTE you'd accept it I'd fly back to Britain and leave a briefcase full of cash but I know you would just refuse to take it and instead demand i wire it through 15 different bank accounts in five countries one of which does all it's business in Mandarin Chinese.

More likely I'd have a complete mental breakdown and you'd call security to have me removed and go back to following THE PROCEDURE you've got tattoo'd on the inside of your eyelids and never use one of the two brain cells you were shat out into creation with.

There. I think that might be why everyone hates the SLC.

Almost Canadian

I have no opinion about the SLC but ....

If I had such a massive brain I would want to earn more than $37,000 ish a year

el_richo

I was thinking the same. I have a brain the size of a dogs nipple and i earn more than that.

youngmimesofharlem

I should hope you do, you're practically museum-ready. By the time I'm your age I expect I'll be earning more than that, if i haven't blown my brains out.

Perhaps you could explain it step by step why older people get paid more money? THAT would explain why my 60 year old boss drives a 100k automobile and I ride a bicycle! I knew there was a reason but I thought it was just because he was smarter.

It's so goddam inEXPLICABLE, the fact they pay people with more experience more money, and the older you are the more years you've spent in soul-crushing tedium in order to haul yourself up the career ladder.

Way to go you.

ireland2canada

Well, yes. I could have written that myself. I have been wrangling with the miserable bastards for well over a year now. A few weeks ago, I cracked. I photocopied all their correspondence to me and put it in date order, advising them in an accompanying letter to contact me again when they have worked it out. Oddly, I have heard nothing since. I assume they are reading the year's worth of letters in a puzzled manner. I will not hold out too much hope as they seem incapable of finding their own arse with both hands.

Nevertheless, you seem about ready to crack to me. Step away from the matter and take a deep breath. Really, there are more important things to be thinking about than the inner workings of the SLC.

el_richo

How old do you think i am?

And in your field, i doubt it

Yelkcub

youngmimesofharlem

You weren't kidding were you?

Leaving aside your absurd suggestion that in 20 years I will be paid no more money than I am now, and leaving aside the fact you have no idea what field I work in and what salaries are to be expected;

What on earth does it matter what two people in different careers at different ages earn? That wasn't my point. Though it's telling you took the first opportunity to get it out there.

The point was that I've started down a nice little career path and to expect grants from the British Government for the privilege is a bit bloody much.

Mind, maybe you could give me some career advice; It must be a sweet gig you've got, to be paid so handsomely and still have time to put up thousands of posts on an internet message board AND update a crushingly dull blog.

Truly, you are living the dream.