You are probably borrowing money from the government to help you live now. When you leave or finish your studies, you then have to pay it back.
How much you are allowed to borrow will depend on your home circumstances, but we do not cover that aspect of student loans. This section only covers how repayments work for what are known as income-based or income-contingent loans , introduced in the autumn of 1998. We do not look at the loans often known as ‘mortgage-style loans’ in place before that time.
The reason we include details of income-contingent loans on this website is that the main way of repaying them is via the tax system. Borrowers will therefore find themselves dealing with both the Student Loans Company (SLC) and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) when they start paying back what they owe.
In the subsequent pages, we cover:
Repaying your loan
Employee repayments
Self-assessment taxpayers
Going abroad
Find out more
