What is considered a qualifying payment for loan forgiveness

The PSLF Program was established to encourage individuals to enter and continue in full-time public service employment by forgiving the remaining balance of their Direct Loans after they have made120 qualifying payments after October 1, 2007, under specific repayment plans while employed by a public service organization.

If you submit a Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) & Temporary Expanded PSLF (TEPSLF) Certification & Application (referred to as the PSLF form) confirming your employment at a qualifying organization, all of your U.S. Department of Education owned student loans that are not already with us will be transferred into our system. Having all of these loans with MOHELA will allow you to track your progress in PSLF.

After your loans transfer, we will review your payment and servicing history to determine any qualifying payments you made while you held qualifying employment.

We recommend that you submit a PSLF form annually so that you can keep track of your progress and be sure your payments count. You must be employed full-time at a qualifying public service organization at the time you make each of the required 120 qualifying payments, so at least 10 years of service must be certified.

You can view the number of qualifying payments* counted toward forgiveness online anytime. Just create an online account and sign in to Account Access, our secure website.

* Please note: "qualifying payments" are payments made:

Your private, not-for-profit organization must provide one of the following services:

Only Direct Loans are eligible for PSLF. If your loan type isn't eligible, you can consolidate your non-eligible federal student loans into a Direct Consolidation Loan to make them eligible for PSLF. If you do not know what type of federal loans you have, visit StudentAid.gov/login and find out. When you sign in, if you see any of the below loan types, you need to consolidate them to benefit from PSLF:

Note: Certain loan types are not eligible for any of the Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans.

As previously stated, if your loans are not eligible for PSLF, you can consolidate them into a Direct Consolidation loan to make them eligible for PSLF. Learn more about consolidation.

Certain loan types that were made under the Direct Loan Program are not eligible for any of the Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans that allow you to benefit from forgiveness under the PSLF Program. The following types of Direct Loans will need to be consolidated and repaid under the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan in order to benefit from PSLF:

If these loan types are consolidated into a Direct Consolidation Loan, the Direct Consolidation Loan can then be repaid under the ICR plan (but not under any of the other IDR plans).

Ask your loan servicer about repaying your loans under one of the Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans that determine your required monthly payment amount based on your income and family size. And since you're working in public service, you may qualify under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program for forgiveness of any remaining balance on your eligible federal student loans after you've made 120 qualifying monthly payments while employed full-time by an eligible public service organization. To benefit from the PSLF Program, you must make the majority of these payments under an IDR plan. For more information on PSLF and the eligibility requirements, visit Mohela.com/PSLF.

You may prepay your loans (make lump sum payments) and have those payments count towards forgiveness. Each prepayment will only count for up to 12 qualifying payments. In order for the prepayment to qualify for subsequent months you must:

A payment period is tracked as eligible when your payment meets all of the following payment eligibility requirements:

An eligible payment becomes a qualifying payment when you certify your employment and all or part of your employment period is approved. Eligible payment periods that correspond to approved employment periods are also tracked as qualifying. These payments count toward the 120 required for loan forgiveness.

The PSLF program eligibility has been temporarily expanded to include payments previously made on certain ineligible repayment plans. This limited forgiveness opportunity is called Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness (TEPSLF).

While all PSLF eligible payments count for TEPSLF, some payments are only eligible for TEPSLF. If you previously made payments under a non-qualifying PSLF repayment plan, TEPSLF may allow you to qualify for forgiveness sooner.

Continue to make full, on-time payments and certify your employment, annually. We'll automatically track your payments for TEPSLF in the same way your PSLF payments are tracked. Once you have made your 120th payment, for TEPSLF or PSLF, submit your final Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) & Temporary Expanded PSLF (TEPSLF) Certification & Application to count your qualifying payments!