What happens to your loan

Your Student Loan was transferred to Inland Revenue as soon as it was approved and payments were made to you and your education provider.

You can check your loan balance in Inland Revenue's online service, myIR

Paying back your loan

When to make repayments

You need to start making repayments once you earn over $22,828 a year before tax ($439 a week before tax). You can also choose to make additional payments which means you may be able to pay off your loan faster.

Use the Student Loan repayment calculator on the Inland Revenue website to see how long it will take you to pay off.

How to make repayments

How you make repayments depends on what kind of income you get.

Salary or wages

If you earn salary or wages you'll need to make sure you're using the right tax code so that repayments can be deducted automatically from your pay. If you think the deductions are too high and you have more than one source of income, you may be able to apply for a special deduction rate from Inland Revenue.

Self-employed or earn other income

If you're self-employed or earn other income, you'll need to fill out the required form so that Inland Revenue can work out how much you need to repay.

Work and Income benefit

If you’re making loan repayments from your Work and Income benefit and you're going to keep getting your benefit, you don't need to do anything. The repayments will keep coming out of your benefit.

Interest

The Student Loan is interest free if you stay in New Zealand. If you don’t make your payments on time, you may be charged late payment interest.

If you go overseas, you may be charged interest. It depends how long you go for.

Going overseas

You need to contact Inland Revenue before you leave New Zealand.

You may need to keep making Student Loan repayments to Inland Revenue, unless you can get a temporary repayment suspension.

You may also be charged interest. It depends how long you go for.

Getting another Student Loan in the future

If you return to study in the future, there are a number of things you need to check before you complete an application for a new Student Loan.