New Perk: Student Loan Repayment

[Peace77]

In order to attract and retain talent,some companies are offering assistance towards repaying the employees' student loans.
www.glassdoor.com/blog/companies-student-loan-forgiveness/

[Tiny]

That is interesting!   Is it considered taxable income for the employee (ie part of their salary?).    Does the employer make an actual payment to the loan - or is it on the employee to get the $$ to the loan?   Does the employer get some tax benefit from it? 

[adela76]

This kind of bugs me . . .  Instead of a complicated program administered by a third party to pay $100 a month toward individual student loans (which is not a lot), just pay your employees more!  According to a google search, the payment is taxable income to the employee.  It sounds like mainly a recruitment/retention tool for the employer.  There are efforts to make the payments tax-free: www.plansponsor.com/lawmakers-introduce-bill-help-employers-offer-student-loan-repayment-benefit/ 

[Tiny]

Jul 10, 2019 17:29:41 GMT -5 adela76 said:

This kind of bugs me . . .  Instead of a complicated program administered by a third party to pay $100 a month toward individual student loans (which is not a lot), just pay your employees more!  According to a google search, the payment is taxable income to the employee.  It sounds like mainly a recruitment/retention tool for the employer.  There are efforts to make the payments tax-free: www.plansponsor.com/lawmakers-introduce-bill-help-employers-offer-student-loan-repayment-benefit/ 

This  "benefit" IS paying an  employee more-- from the article between 1200 to 2K per year more.  If you had student loans and your employer offered you this - it wouldn't make much sense to NOT take it.   I do agree that it's a recruitment/retention tool for an employer.   I suspect it's a way for an employer to offer more "money" to an employee without actually raising wages.  I doubt an employer would replace wages with this benefit.  

[1Day@aTime]

I had the last $7500 of my SL paid as long as I stayed on for at least 3 years (or I would have had to pay it back).  They just paid the SL directly and it was taxable.

Fine by me, it was 7500 off my back and I had no plans to leave. This was ages ago and I'm still here.

[geenamercile]

I see it more of just post paying for courses vs pre-paying like many companies already do with paying for their employees to take courses.  

[Tiny]

Jul 11, 2019 7:43:45 GMT -5 geenamercile said:

I see it more of just post paying for courses vs pre-paying like many companies already do with paying for their employees to take courses.  

Yes, it's kind of like  "tuition re-imbursement" for courses you maybe took a few years ago.