How much is Child Benefit at the moment?

[Wonderstuff]

Got a feeling that combined with WTC could mean I have to pay back my student loan We have suddenly started to get a lot mor WTC, no idea why. Nightmare.

£20 per week for 1 child.

Bugger, going to have to pay it. Seems so unfair that family benefits count towards my income. I've never earned enough to pay it back before.

My child benefit wasn't taken into account; just my salary when I repaid mine.

How repayments are worked out

Most people pay back their ?income contingent? Student Loans in the same way as they pay their Income Tax. If you are employed in the UK, your Student Loan repayments will be collected through the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system.

You don?t start paying back your loans until you reach the repayment threshold. This means that you will begin making repayments when your gross earnings are more than either:

£1,250 a month
*
£288 a week

If you are paid at different intervals ? for example, fortnightly or every four weeks ? these figures are adjusted in line with the annual threshold (£15,000 per year).

If you receive income from other sources

If you have any ?unearned income? from other sources like savings or investments, remember that this counts towards your total income. You?ll need to make extra Student Loan repayments through Self Assessment.

That's from the Direct Gov website. I'd ring the SLC and see what they have to say. I wouldn't think that child benefit counts; it's not used as income for tax purposes and so I don't see why it should count for this.

Put the cb into your dh's/partner's name?

Meant to add...when I was paying mine, they never asked about savings, just took it from my pay. Your savings are none of their business imo.

Yes but I am obviously older than you!
I was at uni 1997-2000 and so they don't collect through the tax system, rather they send me a letter once a year to see if my income is at a certain level and giving me the option of refering. I think it's calculated at the national average wage, much more than £15K annually, which I have never managed to earn (mainscale teacher). Anyway we are now getting quite a bit in CTC, which I think is in error and I have to list CTC and CB as income on the deferment form, which puts me about £20 a month over. Too late to put things in dh name, based on last 3 months.

I also have a more recent loan from my PGCE which comes out of my wages - lucky me

Jobs for tomorrow, call SLC. Call CTC. They are always so helpful. What fun

BTW only income from savings (so interest) that they are interested in. Not that I have any.

I don't think you are older than me. I got a grant for uni back in 1987-1990, when they still existed!

I did my PGCE in 2000-01 and got the basic maintenance loan due to dh's income which meant I wouldn't have got anything else. That came out of wages and increased as I went up the main scale.

LOL - OK no grants when I was at Uni. I think that student loan terms got progressivly worse until about 2000. My PGCE loan is the same as yours. I guess I have defered the undergraduate one for a decade

Can you be expected to pay both back at the same time? If you are paying the PGCE back, can't they let that finish before you pay the next one?

I graduated in 2000 and they told me that CB didn't count as income.

The payback of the original loan is based on Gross income, can't imagine being able to defer it on the basis I am paying back a later one, I will have to pay back all three years loans simultaniously.

Oodles that is interesting, the deferment form asks for CB and CTC to be listed, I assumed because they counted towards gross income, I'll call SLC tomorrow. I distinctly remember them being unhelpful in the past. I'll let you know [bet you're on tenterhooks]

If you do have to start paying it back based on your current income and then find out that your tax credits have been done wrongly and are being lowered, then you can re-apply for deferrment.