I wrote a post about law school loan forgiveness and income based repayment back in March. At that time both were still proposals but back in October they became official after being passed by Congress.
It is nice to know that if I do 10 years of public service that my law school loans will be forgiven. It is even nicer to know that my loan payments will be capped at 15% of my income above 150% of the poverty level and any remaining balance will be forgiven after 25 years. I hope I’m not still paying on my student loans in 25 years but it is good to know that my payments will be capped at a level I can easily make.
The only drawback is that if I have loans forgiven they will be treated as income for that year. That would most likely result in a huge tax bill. I’m not going to worry about that for now though. If it appears likely that I will have my loans forgiven than I’ll come up with a strategy for dealing with the taxes at that time.