Managing UK student loans while living and working in Germany or elsewhere in the EU: SLC rules, overseas thresholds, tax interaction, mobility, and practical planning for British graduates on the continent
Moving to Germany or any other EU country does not erase a UK student loan. The legal contract sits with the Student Loans Company (SLC). What changes is the route SLC uses to collect: once you are outside the UK for more than three months, they expect you to move from PAYE-based collection to direct payments based on an Overseas Income Assessment.
Germany is treated as a high-income country in SLC’s overseas repayment framework, alongside many western and northern EU states. Other EU countries may sit at slightly different threshold levels, but the core logic is identical: SLC sets an income threshold in local currency, converts your income into GBP using its own rates, and calculates a monthly repayment based on your income above that threshold.
EU freedom of movement used to simplify some side issues; post-Brexit, you now navigate immigration, tax, and registration systems that are separate from the UK. None of that touches the underlying student loan contract. SLC does not care what visa you hold, what residence card you have, or how you register locally. They care about one thing: evidence of your income and a predictable stream of repayments where required.
This guide focuses on concrete mechanics for UK borrowers in Germany and other EU countries: how and when to notify SLC, how EU payroll and local tax interact (or do not interact) with UK loan rules, how to handle cross-border jobs and remote roles, what happens when you ignore correspondence, and how to turn a mess of small admin tasks into a simple annual routine.
SLC’s rule is simple: if you will be outside the UK for more than three months, you must tell them. That applies whether you relocate permanently to Berlin, take a two-year contract in Amsterdam, or bounce between EU cities on fixed-term assignments. Once flagged as an overseas borrower, you step into the Overseas Income Assessment process.
Many people move first and only then stabilise the admin. Once you have registered locally, opened a bank account, and have a contract or at least an offer:
Once HMRC-based PAYE deductions stop, the system does not assume your obligations vanish. If SLC gets no income data from the UK and no evidence from you, they classify you as a non-compliant overseas borrower and set fixed repayments at the top of your band.
EU countries like Germany are heavy on registration: local address registration, residence permits, tax IDs, health insurance, and so on. SLC is not interested in those formalities directly. They care about something much more basic: that they can contact you, and that you give them evidence of your income for each assessment period.
German or EU residency categories matter for immigration and local tax. For UK student loans, they are noise. SLC treats you as an overseas borrower once you are out of the UK; within that, they care about income and contactability, nothing more.
SLC has no access to German or EU payroll data. They do not receive feeds from German Finanzamt systems, French URSSAF databases, or Spanish Agencia Tributaria records. The only channel they have to align repayments with reality is the Overseas Income Assessment you submit. Ignore it, and they guess. Engage with it, and your repayments track your actual circumstances.
The system is bureaucratic but not mysterious. Provide honest evidence, keep copies of everything, and your repayments follow the same simple formula every year. Refuse to engage, and you hand SLC permission to assume whatever level of income suits their default tables.
Once SLC has an annual income figure for you, the rest is mechanical. The rules for overseas borrowers are the same as for UK residents, but with country-specific thresholds and a currency conversion step: 9% of income above threshold for undergraduate loans, 6% for postgraduate loans.
Numbers below are illustrative only. Actual thresholds and exchange rates change and are set by SLC each year.
Process in general:
The formula is fixed. Your leverage is in three places only: your income, your country-specific threshold, and the plan rules (interest rate, write-off age). You cannot hack the formula with vague arguments; you can only choose how cleanly you operate inside it.
Germany and other EU countries have their own tax laws, social contributions, and, in some cases, domestic student loan or grant systems. None of these cancel or replace a UK student loan. You are dealing with separate buckets: local tax, possibly local student debt, and your UK student loan contract.
Keep the buckets mentally separate: bucket one is your EU tax and social security; bucket two is any local student loans; bucket three is the UK student loan. They all compete for your cash-flow, but only tax interacts via treaties. The UK loan is a standalone contract.
Germany and the wider EU create messy patterns: living in one country, working in another; remote employment for a UK firm while living in Berlin; multi-country contracts with global employers; frequent moves across borders. SLC does not attempt to mirror every complexity. They want a single total income figure in GBP for the assessment period and a primary country to which they apply thresholds.
SLC is not set up to track every border crossing. They want a simple view: primary country of residence, total income, and documentation to back it up. If you can summarise your situation cleanly, you make their job easier and avoid default assumptions.
Living in Germany or the wider Eurozone usually means earning and spending in euros, while paying SLC in pounds. Add in side work paid in another currency, and you have three moving parts: your nominal GBP obligation, the real EUR cost of meeting it, and whatever FX spreads and fees your bank or transfer service charges.
Treat FX as an engineering constraint, not a philosophical crisis. Your variables: which provider you use, how often you transfer, whether you build a buffer, and how you plan around volatility. SLC will not adjust your assessed GBP obligation just because real-world rates moved against you.
The threat in Germany or the EU is not immediate legal drama. It is gradual, compounding arrears because you stopped opening SLC emails while your UK PAYE deductions quietly ceased. Once labelled non-compliant, you are no longer treated as a finely-calibrated income-contingent payer; you are treated as a problem account.
Important distinctions between what SLC can and cannot do in Germany / EU states:
Filling in one assessment form per year and setting up an automatic payment is dull. Years of arrears, collection letters, and a messy record when you want to return to the UK is worse. The rational choice is obvious once you drop the fantasy that distance voids contracts.
Abstract rules land better when you see them in action. These simplified case studies show how the same SLC framework plays out for different EU-based UK graduates.
A Plan 2 borrower moves to Berlin on a €60,000 base salary plus modest bonus. They update SLC before leaving, complete the Overseas Income Assessment, and provide the German contract and pay slips.
Plan 1 borrower moves to Spain on a seasonal hospitality contract, then a second, with long gaps between roles. Income is lumpy and low overall.
Plan 2 borrower moves to Germany on a high salary but never tells SLC. PAYE deductions stop after leaving the UK. Over several years they ignore letters sent to an old UK address and discount emails as spam.
Borrower lives permanently in Germany but works fully remotely for a UK company on a UK employment contract, paid in GBP into a UK account.
None of these scenarios depend on clever legal arguments. They hinge on whether the borrower engages with the system or not. The rules are boring by design. Use that to your advantage instead of pretending geography grants a pass.
Use this as a working list before departure and during your time living and working in Germany or other EU countries.
UK student loans track income, not borders. If you treat the system as a known set of rules instead of an optional suggestion, you can turn it into background infrastructure rather than a future ambush.
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.