The COVID-19 pandemic has had deep financial effects on people worldwide. The COVID-19 Emergency Relief program was designed in part to help relieve at least some of the financial burden on Americans. While many people have probably heard about the stimulus checks or child tax credits associated with the Emergency Relief program, few have heard about the ability of individuals to get refunds on student loan payments made during COVID-19. Yes, you heard that right! You may be eligible for refunds depending on the type of loans you have and when you made payments. Continue reading for a guide to getting refunds on student loan payments made during COVID-19.
TYPES OF ELIGIBLE STUDENT LOANS
Before getting into the nitty gritty details, let us first establish the types of student loans that we are talking about here. First off, these must be federal student loans and, more specifically, they must be federal loans that are owned by the Department of Education. That means that this opportunity for refunds does not apply to individuals with private student loans or federal student loans not owned by the Department of Education. If you are unsure of your loan status, call your loan servicing agency for more details.
GETTING A STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT REFUND
If you can verify that your loans are indeed federal student loans through the Department of Education, the next step is to claim your refund. You may think this is a complicated process, but all you need to do is to call your loan servicing agency with the following information:
- Payment date(s)
- Payment amount(s)
- Number of payments you want refunded
If you make student loan payments to multiple loan servicing agencies, then you need to call each of them individually with the above information. Of important note, doing this will not hurt your eligibility if you are part of the Student Loan Forgiveness Program. Your previous payments made will still count toward your total.
INTEREST AND COLLECTIONS RELIEF
On a related note, there is another area related to education where people can save money, and this involves loans in the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. Anyone who defaulted on these loans would, in normal circumstances, have their federal tax refunds withheld in order to pay off the outstanding amounts owed.
However, the Biden administration initiated a pause on all interest and collections for FFEL loans in default as of March 30th. As such, if you had any tax refunds withheld or wages garnished to cover FFEL loans in default during this period, you are entitled to get those back.
CONCLUSION
To sum it all up, there has been much more done to provide economic relief to those affected by COVID-19 other than just stimulus checks. These loan payment relief measures are critical for people getting their education or who got it and are still paying for it. If you have student loans and are financially strapped, check out if you are eligible for refunds on your student loan payments made during COVID-19!