Lock down your last UK tax year, align PAYE and Self Assessment with SLC, and leave the country without hidden loan surprises or messy underpayments.
The student loan system doesn't care about your calendar year or departure date. It cares about UK tax years, HMRC records, and whether your final year of income is properly captured and linked to your loan before you disappear overseas.
If you leave the UK without understanding your final tax year, you create a black hole: PAYE stops, Self Assessment is half-done or not done, HMRC data is incomplete, and SLC is left with gaps. Gaps get filled with assumptions, not generosity.
The goal here is simple: close your last UK tax year cleanly, ensure the right student loan deductions are recorded, and then transition into the overseas system with no hidden timebombs from the year you left.
For most employed people, your final interaction with the UK system is through payroll. That's where your last student loan deductions happen before you go overseas.
Do not assume "my employer will sort it". Their legal duty is to HMRC, not to your loan record. You verify the deductions actually appear against your student loan account before you vanish abroad.
If you are in Self Assessment, your student loan is partly handled by PAYE and partly by your tax return. When you leave the UK, you still complete a final return for the tax year in which you stopped being UK resident or stopped having UK-source income.
Your final UK tax return is not optional just because you've left. Until HMRC has a completed return and any balancing payment, your student loan record for that year is incomplete.
SLC does not sit inside HMRC. They receive data feeds. If those feeds are wrong or incomplete, your student loan record is wrong or incomplete. You do not fix SLC by shouting at SLC; you fix the HMRC record first.
Most emigrants leave mid-year. That means part of the tax year is UK salary, part is overseas income, and you are trying to close your UK record while setting up your overseas status with SLC.
The last UK year is where overpayments are common: bonus-heavy months, late HMRC updates, or PAYE still deducting loan repayments after you hit the point where you've fully cleared a balance.
Do not engineer an overpayment just before leaving because you "want to get ahead". On income-contingent loans, overpaying rarely changes your lifetime cost unless you are a genuine high-earner who will fully repay anyway.
Underpayment in the final UK year usually comes from PAYE not being switched on in time, missed payroll flags when you changed employer, or Self Assessment returns that didn't tick the student loan box.
Ignoring HMRC demands and leaving the country does not erase the underpayment. It simply turns manageable arrears into a long-term mess that SLC will chase via overseas collections.
Your final UK tax year and the start of your overseas status overlap. You do not wait for the last UK tax return to be filed before starting the overseas process. You run both timelines in parallel.
If you have mixed income – PAYE plus contracts, or you're fully self-employed – your final year is more admin-heavy. Still manageable if you treat HMRC and SLC as separate systems that both require clean numbers.
You avoid errors faster by seeing exactly how other people have broken the system before you.
Borrower leaves UK employment in February, employer forgets to stop student loan deductions until April, tax year ends, overpayment happens. Borrower leaves UK, closes UK bank, ignores P60. Two years later they realise SLC thinks they paid more than they actually did because HMRC data is wrong. Fix would have been: check final payslips and P60, keep the UK account open long enough for reconciliation and any refund, then request correction and refund while still easy to prove.
Contractor with £45k PAYE and £20k freelance income forgets to tick the loan box on Self Assessment in the final UK year. HMRC charges income tax but no loan catch-up. SLC records only PAYE deductions. Years later, HMRC revisits the return, charges backdated student loan repayment plus interest. The fix should have been obvious: final Self Assessment, student loan box ticked, balancing payment made before leaving.
Borrower leaves UK in June, ignores the next January Self Assessment deadline, focuses only on Overseas Income Assessment. HMRC flags non-filing, issues penalties, and student loan underpayment remains unresolved. Overseas assessment does not magically backfill the missing UK year. Proper path would have been: final UK Self Assessment plus overseas assessment in parallel.
Strip it down to a list. If you cannot tick these, you have unfinished UK-side admin before you start pretending you're "fully overseas".
“I left the UK years ago and never filed the final return.”
Then your HMRC and SLC records are wrong. You clean it by filing outstanding returns and dealing with penalties. There is no shortcut that bypasses HMRC.
“I was under the repayment threshold that year – do I still need to file anything?”
Threshold affects whether you owe repayments, not whether you owe a tax return. If HMRC expects a return, you file it, even at low income.
“Can I pay a lump sum at the end instead of sorting the final-year admin?”
You can throw money at SLC, but you still have an incomplete HMRC history if returns are missing. You fix the data, not just the balance.
“Does my first overseas tax return talk to SLC automatically like HMRC does?”
No. SLC does not receive data from foreign tax authorities. Overseas assessments run on documents you send them directly.
Final P45/P60, final Self Assessment, final HMRC-to-SLC data feed. After that, everything is an overseas problem – by design, not by accident.
UK Education Policy Specialist
With over 15 years of experience in UK education policy and student finance, Dr. Sharma founded Student Loan Calculator UK to help students navigate the complex world of student loans.