Student Loan repayment??

[Tuckingfypo]

Hello, I was wondering if someone smarter and more knowledgable than me could help me with a query?

I'm on ML at the moment (currently in the 90% pay period) and have received my pay and annual bonus of £1,500. I have been taxed a lot more than usual on this which, after speaking to my colleague, sounds about the right figure considering I'm not on my full wage.

But I've noticed on my payslip that £100 has also been deducted from my pay for my student loan. I currently earn just over £16,000 per year so I am under the threashold to pay my loan back.

I rang the student loan company up and the man I spoke to said he could see I didn't earn enough to start making repayments and I should receive a letter about the payment in May. He said I could then call them to sort a refund out?

He didn't really explain exactly why they would make a deduction from my pay, I'm assuming it's due to my bonus? I thought maybe they would work on the assumption that my monthly pay will always be that figure so I'm eligible to start making payments but he couldn't tell me if that was the case?

Has anyone had any experience of this at all? Sorry I'm completely clueless when it comes to things like this

Yeah I'd assume it's based on the fact that 12x your income this month would have put you over the repayment threshold. There's stuff on money saving expert about how to reclaim overpayments.

Thanks @Spam88 I got a bit of a shock and panicked as I'm currently saving every spare penny for when I go down to SMP, hopefully it's a straight forward process to get a refund!

Good luck. I tried to get a refund on an unexpected bonus but was told it was calculated monthly, so if a monthly payment exceeded the threshold (pro rata) then they could take a percentage. My loan was from 04-07 though so your terms are hopefully different!

I had the same thing, but I have never received a letter from the saying I am due a refund. I imagine it’s a difficult process as always, and so it’s on my to-do list.

You won't get a refund. I pay a big chunk of student loan every year in bonus month. The rest of the year I pay about £6/month

I've just found this http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk/portal/page?pageid=93,6678490&&_dad=portal which confirms exactly what everyone else has said. It seems at the end of the tax year if you total income is under the £18,330 threshold you can apply for a refund, but I imagine it's something you'd have to jump through hoops to get!

It's easy to get a refund, I just phoned them and got mine sorted today (I had a month where I earned more than normal). Defo worth the phone call.

Worth saying that the refund I just got was for the last tax year so you may have to wait until April next year to get your money back (that's what I had to do) so they know how much you earned in total that year.

They never send letters offering a refund because it is technically a loan repayment (although most of us never fully pay off the loan).