Australian graduates face a multimillion-dollar markup on university debts that they have already discharged because of a timing quirk in the processing of repayments.
Former students are required to pay off their Higher Education Loan Programme (Help) debts through a top-up to their tax, which is typically collected by their employers each pay period and sent to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
These additional repayments are not subtracted from loan balances until graduates have lodged their tax returns on or after 1 July, and the ATO has used that information to calculate each debtors repayment obligation for the year.
With Help repayments indexed on 1 June each year, this means the previous 11 months of repayments are included i…
Read the full article at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/loan-repayment-anomaly-adds-a300-australian-students-debts