There are a number of recent grads in from my law school, myself included, who cannot answer this question: when applying for IBR repayment, what constitutes “significantly different” income for purposes of the application? Many of us were working very part time in 2013 and will make more money in 2014 from new employment. From what I’ve seen, alternative documentation “may be used” when income is different - but there seems to be substantially different interpretations of what that means. Can someone please answer this question? Does an income increase trigger the “substantially different income” threshold for applying for IBR? Neither the Department of Ed nor FedLoan Servicing have been able to give helpful answers to this question. Thanks!

Would it really be a problem for any of you to just provide them your 2013 tax returns for calculating the ibr payment?  You can always pay them more than the ibr calculated amount, can’t you?

Hey new2repayment, check out (you’ll have to copy and past the links below, clicking won’t work here, for some reason):

- My post here: http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=73674
- My comments and the blogger’s responses in this blog post: http://educatedrisk.org/analysis/step-step-process-applying-ibrpaye-using-your-loan-servicers-paper-application
- This thread (especially comments starting about half-way down): http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/adjusted-gross-income-agi-when-consolidating-loans-for-ibr.1033976/

I hope this is helpful!

Helpful links, Hastibe. I have a friend who is dealing with a similar issue where they just started working after several years in school and are now applying for IBR. Probably can’t use their $0 Income Tax Return from last year but also seems unfair that, by submitting a paystub as Alternative Documentation of Income, they lose out on any AGI-related deductions.