REPAYE minimum payment calculation Forum

[Anonymous User]

Is the repaye min payment based on the prior year's AGI? My payment came in lower than what I expected, and far closer to what it would have been based on last year's income.

[Anonymous User]

It's based on whatever information you last gave them about your income. So that's either a paystub or your last year's tax return. Since you haven't paid taxes on 2021 yet, yes, it's probably based on your income reported for 2020, unless you submitted a paystub since you started working.

[Anonymous User]

I haven’t given them a paystub but they didn’t ask on the application as far as I remember; I thought it asked how much I made, and if it did I certainly put in my full gross salary per annum. Seems odd they would lowball the min payment and then not adjust until recertification

[Anonymous User]

The application doesn't ask you to provide your income, it links up electronically with your last tax return. So that's where they'd have got your financial information and that's what the payment is based on.

Basically you have to certify your income every 12 months. There's nothing that requires you to notify them of changes in income before the 12 months is up. You *can* notify them, so for instance if your income went down drastically you could submit a paystub so they'd lower your monthly payment. And I think you're sort of encouraged to notify them if your salary goes up a bunch, but again, you're only *required* to do so every 12 months. So everyone has a really low payment their first year (assuming you didn't work full time while going to law school) and that's just kind of how the system works.

[Anonymous User]

Okay great, thank you. Just want to make sure I'm doing it all by the book since I am trying for PSLF