By Persis Yu and Seth Frotman Right before the holidays, Montana Legal Services Association, National Consumer Law Center, and the Student Borrower Protection Center filed an amicus brief to support Montanans demanding justice for abuses by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA, a/k/a Fedloan Servicing) — a large, student loan servicing company that deprived these […]

Defaulted student loan borrowers who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and/or the Child Tax Credit (CTC) now have a new glimmer of hope. Late last week, Representative Sylvia Garcia introduced the Stop EITC and CTC Seizures Act which would protect student loan borrowers from having their EITC and CTC seized to repay […]

‘The injustice of the federal government withholding disability benefits for people who it knows are totally and permanently disabled and entitled to debt relief is hard to comprehend.’ by Alex Elson Too often, political blinders thwart commonsense policies that everyone should support. That is why the Trump administration’s decision last month to automatically discharge student […]

About the author: National Consumer Law Center intern Kendra Cobb is a rising third-year law student at Howard University School of Law who is passionate about financial services and economic empowerment. She serves as Vice-President of the Business Law Society and has experience working with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, an estate planning firm, […]

This post originally appeared on https://protectborrowers.org/qualifying-payments/ This year, we’ve seen lawmakers in states across the country demand accountability from the private-sector student loan companies that handle loans for more than 44 million Americans. These breakdowns include lost paperwork and shoddy record-keeping when loans are transferred between companies—a process that has affected more than 10 million student loan […]

Last week, Senator Lamar Alexander, the Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, proposed a program that would require student loan borrowers to repay their loans through mandatory automatic deductions from their paychecks. Yesterday, the National Consumer Law Center released a policy brief, The Dark Side of Payroll Withholding to Repay Student Loans, […]

It has been one year since student loan borrowers have been theoretically eligible to have their loans forgiven under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. And yet, out of the 28,000 borrowers who applied, only 96 have had their loans forgiven. That is less than 1 percent of applicants. That number is shocking and […]

For student loan borrowers struggling to repay their loans, income-driven repayment plans are a lifeline that helps millions of people stay out of default. There are several income-driven repayment plans: Pay As You Earn – PAYE, Revised Pay As You Earn – REPAYE, Income-Based Repayment – IBR, Income-Contingent Repayment – ICR.  These programs let borrowers […]

Student loan borrowers who apply to have their loans canceled due to their disability or the death of their child can worry about one less thing: possible tax consequences. When a borrower dies or becomes permanently disabled before paying off student loans, the loans can be discharged, relieving the disabled borrower or surviving family members […]

Defaulted student loan borrowers planning to file their taxes should know that any refund they were expecting will likely wind up at the Department of Education (ED) instead of their bank account. Tax refund offsets are one of the powerful tools the government uses to collect defaulted federal student loans. For many struggling student loan borrowers, […]