Repaying student loans? Remember to check your payslips
The threshold for when you need to start repaying your student loan can change every April (at the start of the tax year). If you are employed and making loan repayments through the tax system, then you should check your payslip to make sure the correct repayment has been deducted.
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Repayments via your payslip
If you are employed and earning above the repayment threshold for your loan plan, then usually your employer should deduct your loan repayment directly from your pay. It is important to check your payslip to confirm that this repayment has been calculated correctly as each loan plan has a different repayment threshold. If the wrong loan plan is used this may mean you under or over repay your loan.
You should have let your employer know which student loan plan you have when you started your employment by selecting the right loan plan on the starter checklist. If you didn’t do this, your employer will have calculated your repayments using the Plan 1 threshold until you or HMRC identify an incorrect repayment has been made.
Checking your payslip
Ideally you should check your payslip each time you get paid, but it is even more important to check it after the start of a new tax year. This is because the repayment thresholds can change in April. The repayments thresholds for the 2025/26 tax year are as follows:
- Plan 1 £26,065 (an increase of £1,075 from 2024/25 tax year)
- Plan 2 £28,470 (an increase of £1,175 from 2024/25 tax year)
- Plan 4 £32,745 (an increase of £1,350 from 2024/25 tax year)
- Postgraduate loans £21,000 (no change from the previous tax year)
This may mean that your repayments could be lower than in the last tax year, or higher if you have had a recent pay rise. Our Employees: student loan repayments and Postgraduate loans guidance explains when you will start repaying your loan and how repayments are calculated.
If you think your loan repayments could be wrong, then you should check with your employer to make sure that they are using the correct loan plan. If you are unsure which loan plan you have then you should contact the Student Loans Company (SLC).
Close to finishing repayments
If you are nearly at the end of repaying your student loan and have less than two years to finish repayments, then the SLC recommend you switch to paying them back directly. This can help avoid making any overpayments. The SLC should write to you to recommend you ‘opt out’ of paying via the tax system and change to paying them directly, we explain more about this on our website.
