I’ve not checked whether the removal of interest on islanders’ loans in 2010 wiped all historical interest, in fact I doubt that was the case for interest accrued prior to his departure in 2004. The number of relevant acts and amendments since 1990 makes research incredibly time consuming.

Unless you notify IRD of your circumstances and successfully apply for a hardship application you are annually obligated to pay at these rates and penalised an…

I think the fact that you can be arrested for non-payment is another reason to argue loan repayments are a tax, not a debt.

It’s all very well these student…

That said, $35k/year is going to be $31,010 after tax in the Cook Islands. Subtracting another $5,000 from that seems like a big chunk of income simply to retain repayment obligations so as to avoid being arrested on the next visit to NZ and to stop the…

Uh, Checkpoint, obviously. Old habit.

I can’t seem to make this add up.

The maximum interest rate that IRD’s charged on student loan debt is 9% per year, and that was 1996. The maximum since 1999 has been 7%.

He’s just said on Campbell Live…

He had made an arrangement with the IRD, he said. "They said if I paid for this year's obligation [$5000] then they would wipe…

Puna accepted…

This is a

And of course, if they weren't studying they wouldn't have those expenses.

You could argue that we should pay all students, even foreign students, enough to live on while they study, but I don't think that's this…

It turns out that the arrested defaulter is the Cook Island Prime Minister’s nephew.

Steven Joyce:

"Our preference is that people just meet their obligations and that’s the important thing because you can’t forget that these people have had the benefit of loans from the tax payers to be educated.…

Thanks Izogi, quite possibly not an altogether unusual scenario

As at April 30, 2013, there are more than 2,200 overseas-based student loan borrowers whose loan balances are over $100,000..

From your link:

He…

The 40 year old man is apparently claiming that his loan was about $40,000 when he left New Zealand,…

A Kiwi living overseas who refused to repay his student loan has been arrested at the New Zealand border.

This is the first time the sanction has been used. The man was detained on Monday while trying to leave the country, Inland Revenue confirmed.

He has lived overseas since…

There were just under 109,500 overseas-based people with student debt at the end of June last year, and they were a collective $863.3million behind in their repayments, with over 70,000 of them not meeting…

"This is working really well, particularly in Australia,…

Having had some time to reflect and do some research I thought I’d come back to this topic:

Pretty sure I had to sign something to get a student loan. Marginally sure that something said that it was a loan, and that I had to pay it back…

A yet-to-be finalised responsible lending code accompanying the change may curtail companies' ability to lend to people who obviously cannot pay.

apparently the vomit is valuable

And Keith, beyond financial and legal considerations and your rather glib appraisal of the SL changes, I genuinely value the…

Isn’t that basically the jist of the budget? Sure they’d have to accommodate me for more than a decade before I show any profit, but you know, compared to the…

This budget is all about balancing the books. So let's take a quick look at our fair nation's biggest income generating activity: tourism. This alone is worth $23 billion to our economy, making it really quite important.

So why do…

I remember one of my Russian lecturers likening student loans to the redemption payments the newly emancipated serfs in Russia had to make. The redemption payments were like…

As Willy Loman said to Charlie: __"After all…

Pretty sure that at 17 I signed something to get a student loan without parental consent, marginally sure that the…

Yeah, it was almost tolerable until that announcement…

Nah, I reckon it's better living in a third world country earning a…

It's a whingeworthy topic.

Maybe that'll be the real reason John Key's imaginary boat people come to NZ, to load up with student grant refugees for the return trip.

I figured as much but I thought I'd have a whinge anyway.

I am serious about how quickly the postgraduate landscape has changed though. My partner (far smarter and more diligent than I) has been looking to re-enter academia for the last three years.…

Of course. I was using hyperbole. I don't know how anyone could possibly afford a PhD unless they were already rich, or had a master plan for the use of it (probably in academia, but maybe in some specialist industry).

Unlikely:

i) The snobbery and misunderstanding around a doctorate will probably work against this in the long run. By way of a heuristic it was interesting to read here…

I went through the process…

"We've had a robust discussion with the Auckland Council because they're not consenting enough sections," he said.

"They need to get off their bums and do it."

Joyce said the Government would prefer not to have to intervene in the process but it wasn't prepared…

No one really…

How long before a doctorate is really the bare minimum you need before you can be trusted with a cash till.

So true. Opposition could make some mileage about character.

The housing initiatives in the Budget appear to dump all over the government's draft agreement on housing with Auckland Council. It sometimes seems that these…

Pretty sure that happened to me too. I signed something that had some fairly clear terms regarding when and how…

Oh , that's right, the 'market' is too big to fail !
We have left 'unchartered' waters,
Sharks ahead...

There seems to be a bad link in for GFYS in:

Signalling that Management, Commerce and Arts should GFYS: Other higher-cost subjects may see an increase in funding if necessary.

of am I just being punished for not using Chrome? I presume this is Go Fund…

Big maybe. There's a lot of us and reports are jobs in NZ are hard to come by.

Student loan borrowers who have defaulted on their repayments could be arrested at the border under new sanctions in Budget 2013 in a drive to increase student loan repayments.

So Corrections will be getting more money to build debtor's prisons?! But later in the article:

The Government…

If I'm reading…

thanks Keith

FM