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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

It's daft to pay off student loan

281 replies

Home77 · 06/03/2019 15:09

with inheritance when you are SAHM? friend says they did this...can't help thinking it is a shame as they could do with the money. they are in their 40s and surely student loans get wiped off after a certain number of years.

OP posts:
squeezysparklyballs · 07/03/2019 20:34

What is wrong with being 'entitled'?

I like everyone else in this country am 'entitled' to a decent education. As are you, @Kazzyhoward

I would also like to live in an educated, orderly, safe and prosperous society. That means investing in our children. Not making them go cap in hand for a 'loan' they probably couldn't pay back if they wanted too.

Current system is so much bollox.

MigGril · 08/03/2019 10:17

Unless your a really high earner it's not worth paying it off. Really the government should have played this as a graduate tax, but no MP wanted to add any tax (overseas students can and have always been treated differently).
Apparently the whole system is costing most to administer then it's generating, which just goes to show how wrong they have got it. Just to avoid calling it a tax, they will seem to do anything to avoid adding any extra tax.

Backwoodsgirl · 08/03/2019 13:32

Nope not entitled, just lost faith in the UK, didn't want to be part of society and left.

Bellasorellaa · 08/03/2019 13:59

you get taxed on inheritance which was taxed when the person was alive
so yes it is daft

Uptheapplesandpears · 08/03/2019 14:06

It wasnt necessarily. These days most IHT is paid from the sale of property. If a person bought a house in 1970, then stayed in in until they died, the value will have increased astronomically in real terms and it wont have been taxed before they died. They may have paid for it using taxed income, but not necessarily, and the gains are going to have outstripped any mortgage repayments.

FormerlyFrikadela01 · 08/03/2019 14:18

you get taxed on inheritance which was taxed when the person was alive
I don't get this line of thinking at all. Yes the dead person paid tax of that money, but now that money is coming to me so I should therefore pay tax.

Add to that the point Uptheapplesandpears brings too that many people inherit money from property that gained massive amounts and the gains haven't been taxed. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Uptheapplesandpears · 08/03/2019 14:49

I dont really get the link between IHT and repaying student loans anyway?

TalkinPaece · 08/03/2019 16:09

applesandpears
The IHT limit on first homes is high enough that very very few people will get hit on just that.

Uptheapplesandpears · 08/03/2019 16:18

Depends when the home was bought and where in the country. There are certainly properties that are now enough to exceed the threshold that would've been cheap enough to be accessible for first purchases a few decades back. Not likely in, say, a Welsh mountain village, although their owners would be less likely to have enough to incur IHT anyway. But some formerly unfashionable and derided area of central-ish London, absolutely.

TalkinPaece · 08/03/2019 16:35

Uptheapples
The limit per person is £425000
so a couple would need a house worth over £850000 to hit IHT on that alone
not many of those outside central London
and most of the expensive houses will hopefully have owners bright enough to do tax planning

Uptheapplesandpears · 08/03/2019 17:14

There aren't actually a lot of people who have to pay IHT full stop, if we're on the subject of rarity. Nor does everyone get married, and there are a great many properties in the UK that would now sell for over 425k that were much, much lower when purchased decades ago. But you can't really say not many outside Central London to refute my point, when my point is that such people exist and will mainly be in that area. That's the same point.

Thus, it's very possible that someone whose estate attracts IHT hasn't paid tax on that money in their lifetime. Or the gain, at least. One of the main arguments given against IHT is that the money will have been taxed already, and there's just no guarantee that's true, given the property market in recent years.

TalkinPaece · 08/03/2019 17:36

Which is all well and good
but has no bearing on the fact that the UKs student loan system was badly designed
and it is not the fault of low earners that they will not repay their loans
and that the loans will likely be written off before they die

Uptheapplesandpairs · 08/03/2019 17:50

Yes, I posted an hour or two ago that the connection between the two issues was unclear to me. It hasn't become any more clear since then.

Fortybingowings · 08/03/2019 17:51

The problem is that certain people want to have their cake and eat it. They are mostly labouring under the misapprehension that UK earners (as a whole) pay enough tax to fund the services they feel entitled-to.
Attitudes towards paying inheritance tax and whether they are entitled to family money, are another aspect of this general malaise.
Property gains over the past 50 years have been eye watering as pointed out above by uptheapplesandpears. This capital tied up in properties needs to fund elderly care. In many cases this is already happening, and so it should. Expecting the state to fund nursing/dementia care for ones elderly parents but still expecting an inheritance is just greedy and hugely entitled. Obviously if someone is saving the state £££££ by caring for their elderly parents at home then this is very different. FWIW I couldn't do it!
IHT will also apply above the thresholds and again, so it should.
Coming back to funding higher education, I say again, it's either student loans or we all agree to pay more tax. There is no money tree.
Expecting to take your university education and not pay back the loans is immoral.

TalkinPaece · 08/03/2019 17:59

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Fortybingowings · 08/03/2019 18:08

Polite Grin

Troels · 08/03/2019 18:15

I think the student loans should be repaid, if you are a high earner, or now earning over the threshold for repayments.
Taking a loan with no intention of paying it back is entitled and wrong in my opinion (we all have one it's an open forum)
We wonder on some threads where people get the idea that they can get money from friends and family and then feel like they shouldn't pay that back, I guess it's a similar frame of mind. They must think they are entitled to the money.

TalkinPaece · 08/03/2019 18:28

Fortybingo
Expecting to take your university education and not pay back the loans is immoral.
My children are not immoral.

Fortybingowings · 08/03/2019 18:43

I don't recall saying they were. The action of willfully avoiding paying back debt that you owe, is immoral.

TalkinPaece · 08/03/2019 18:51

The action of willfully avoiding paying back debt that you owe, is immoral.
But the terms of the loan are that low earners do not have to pay them back
The students are not avoiding anything. That insinuation is unpleasant and untrue.

Fortybingowings · 08/03/2019 19:07

Take my insinuation any way you choose. It stands.
Your reasoning seems to be that because you had it all for free (grants, no fees, housing benefit) then so should the current generation.
This fairy tale would be lovely if the economy could afford it now. Too many people are going to university seemingly at taxpayers expense (if they're never going to pay back their loans)
I'd counter that, far from it being for the public good that all these kids are going to university, it's actually a huge drain on the public purse. Why should the state fund a (not very vocational) 3-4 year degree for a young person to feel overqualified for most of the jobs on offer.

Barrenfieldoffucks · 08/03/2019 19:24

Again, I hardly think many people are actively curtailing their earnings on order to avoid paying back their 9%. That's the only way someone could willfully set out to avoid it, therefore rendering that argument void tbh.

A discussion about validity of certain degrees is a whole other discussion.

sushisuperstar · 09/03/2019 20:14

@Fortybingowings I agree.

Uptheapplesandpears · 10/03/2019 08:56

It's interesting that there's still nobody who's addressed my point about those of us whose loans have been sold. The SLC have effectively terminated my agreement with them, and have made the decision not to avail themselves of any repayments I might make in the future. By all accounts they didn't get a very good price for the loan book either. Where does this leave the moral arguments?

titchy · 10/03/2019 09:22

Regarding the loan book being sold - the sale was always included in the costings the Gov did when introducing the loans, so they make no difference whatsoever on a nationwide scale. Individual decision making is irrelevant as things aren't decided or costed on individual behaviour, but on the behaviour of the group.

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