How much student debt does Georgia have, now that student loans are up for repayment?

ATLANTA — Federal student loan repayments have been back on for a month now, and with the resumption of payments came a new option for how to repay loans.

Data from the federal government showed that, as of Sept. 30, 2023, Georgia had a reported $68.95 billion in student loan debt.

It’s split between roughly 1.7 million borrowers, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The data shows Georgia is the state with the fifth highest federal student loan debt in the country, as of Sept. 30, 2023.

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Here are the top five states for student loan debt, according to the Department of Education:

1. California: $146.67 billion
2. Texas: $125.73 billion
3. District of Columbia: $103.28 billion
4. New York: $93.29 billion
5. Georgia: $68.95 billion

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Between Income-Driven Repayment plans: Income-Based Repayment, Pay as You Earn, Income-Contingent Repayment plans or the new Saving on a Valuable Education Plan, to qualify all of the close to 1.7 million borrowers need to add their tax information to certify how much they’ll end up paying each month.

The U.S. Department of Education also recently released a new, simplified form for Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which also requires access to tax information.

Unfortunately for those trying to file those forms in the next few days, they’ll have to wait due to a temporary system maintenance issue.

On Jan. 6, the Internal Revenue Service has a planned outage, so education officials are warning borrowers “You won’t be able to transfer your federal tax information from the IRS,” but you will still be able to submit the information manually if you have the proper documentation.

The outage will impact borrowers and applicants for about six hours, planned to last from 6 a.m. to noon Eastern time on Saturday.

Financial aid officials also said, “if a required contributor doesn’t provide consent and approval to have their federal tax information transferred into your 2024–25 FAFSA form, you won’t be eligible for federal student aid—even if they manually enter tax information into the FAFSA form.”

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