Students: Loans

(asked on 21st May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average length of time has been for monthly salary deductions collected by HMRC to be reconciled with individual accounts held by the Student Loans Company in each of the last three years.


Answered by
Sam Gyimah Portrait
Sam Gyimah
This question was answered on 29th May 2018

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Student Loans Company (SLC) exchange information about salary deductions after the end of each tax year. SLC does not apply interest to accounts until the information about repayments is received from HMRC. This means that borrowers are not disadvantaged by the time taken to exchange the data between HMRC and SLC.

The Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations 2009 set out that the total amount a borrower has repaid over the last tax year should be treated as having been paid in equal instalments throughout the year, and interest is applied on this basis.

SLC begins to process repayments data as soon as it is received from HMRC after the end of the relevant tax year. HMRC’s current target is to pass 92% of End of Year PAYE returns to SLC by 31 July 2018. SLC aims to have processed these returns by 31 August 2018. Last year, HMRC exceeded their target and passed 96% of End of Year PAYE returns to SLC by 31 July 2017.

The government is taking steps to develop systems to allow the sharing of student loan repayment information more frequently between HMRC and SLC from April 2019 . This will allow for repayments to be credited and for interest calculations to be undertaken regularly throughout the year.

Reticulating Splines