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 […]

With nearly a quarter of federal student loan borrowers in default, borrowers need a system that will help them to successfully repay their loans. Unfortunately, the Department of Education continues to reward contractors that lie to borrowers and to incentivize programs that set borrowers up for failure. InsideARM reports that over the weekend, the Department […]

Many of the 44 million borrowers are struggling to repay their more than $1.4 trillion in student loan debt in the United States. The options for federal student loan borrowers can be good, but as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s many reports and recent lawsuit against Navient demonstrate, accessing those options can be a confusing […]

According to Politico, late Monday night, the Department of Education told a federal appeals court that a court order blocking its ability to send any newly defaulted student loan borrowers to its hired debt collectors has cost taxpayers more than $5 million in lost collections since March. This lawsuit came about because private debt collection […]

Earlier this week, over 150 Members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos highlighting concerns surrounding the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED’s) decision to make changes to the student loan servicing contract procurement process. A month after withdrawing guidance intending to ensure greater consumer protections in the contracting process for student […]

It is a little known fact that a forgiven student loan is usually treated as income for tax purposes. While some types of student loan cancellations (e.g. Public Service Loan Forgiveness, closed-school, etc.) are exempt from taxation, forgiveness of the debt due to disability and death is not exempt. There are limited exceptions to taxation […]

Since the election of Donald Trump for President, we have heard from many people asking us, “what does this mean for student loan borrowers.” The honest answer is that we do not yet know. We have very little actual information about what the next administration plans, and it is still too early to speculate.  The […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Student Loan Ombudsman released a report today estimating that over a third of borrowers who rehabilitate their loans will re-default within the first two years. It further highlighted industry estimates that re-default rates could be as high as 75% over the entire life of the loans. This confirms one […]

This week, the National Consumer Law Center updated its policy brief highlighting the need to end the seizure of Earned Income Tax Credits (“EITC”) from defaulted federal student loan borrowers. As we have said in previous blog posts (here and here), seizing EITC payments is a counterproductive policy.  The EITC is extremely important to working […]

Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (“CFPB”) Student Loan Ombudsman released its midyear report analyzing complaints submitted directly by consumers about their student loans. Importantly, the CFPB’s Student Loan Ombudsman announced that it is now officially accepting complaints about federal student loans. Although it has actually been accepting federal student loan complaints for a […]