After running up 5 years of worth of Student Loan I received a letter today saying I’ve nearly finished paying it off and should set up a direct debit to avoid overpaying. Does this will mean I won’t paying at source so will be effectively be paying more due to tax/NI? Is it better to leave it being deducted at source and just claim back the difference at the end of the 2013/14 tax year?

What have other people done?

I left it at source, and then submitted copy payslips to them to show that I’d paid in full (and then some)

Cheque in the post very quickly once I’d proved I’d paid

Student loan comes out of net pay so makes no odds. I’d set up the DD, theoretically you could be overpaying for 11 months.

I’ve set up the DD, silver lining is that it’s taken two months between them setting up the DD and cancelling the PAYE so I’ve had two months full pay cheques 8)

Word of warning, the DD they set up for me is less than they were taking by PAYE, so it’s going to take slightly longer to pay off than it would at source. Not sure if you can negotiate that, I didn’t bother asking.

I over paid by nearly a year on purpose to get a lump sum back. It took 5 phone calls and a couple of letters to try and cancel it and get the money back. They paid it all back via bank transfer and told me my payments would stop but approx 6 months later I’m still paying £140 per month. I will keep paying it until march then ring to tell them and get it back then waste the whole lot on bike parts again like last time.

Andy

Student loan comes out of net pay so makes no odds

That’s what I was trying to find out. I wasn’t sure if the payroll deductions were made out of nett or gross pay (on my payslip SL deductions are shown with tax, NI, childcare, C2W etc. which are all out of gross pay). If it’s out of nett pay, may as well set up the DD, should result in keeping more of my bonus too (assuming I get one next year)