The One-Time IDR Account Adjustment (2025 Update)

The one-time IDR account adjustment is complete. It gave borrowers retroactive credit for past repayment and forbearance periods—helping many reach the 20- or 25-year mark for IBR loan forgiveness.

However, not everyone’s update has appeared yet.

Some accounts display missing or “null” payment counts, and only IBR forgiveness is currently moving forward while other IDR plans remain paused.

You received the one-time account adjustment if your loans were owned by the U.S. Department of Education as of October 30, 2024. That includes all Direct Loans and federally held FFEL loans.

Borrowers with older or mixed loan types—such as commercial FFEL, Perkins, or HEAL loans—were covered only if they applied to consolidate into the Direct Loan Program by June 30, 2024, and that consolidation was completed before the ownership cutoff.

Borrowers whose loans remained with a commercial lender after that date did not receive the adjustment. Those loans are not eligible for retroactive credit toward forgiveness.

The account adjustment gave borrowers retroactive credit toward the 20- or 25-year forgiveness mark for more than just on-time monthly payments. The Department of Education reviewed each loan’s full history and counted:

• Any months in repayment, regardless of the payment plan or amount.

• Long forbearances — 12 or more consecutive months or 36 cumulative months before July 2024.

• Certain deferments, including all deferments before 2013 (except in-school) and economic-hardship or military deferments from 2013 onward.

• Time before consolidation, if earlier loans were rolled into a Direct Consolidation Loan before the cutoff.

Periods of default and most short forbearances didn’t count. For many borrowers, these credits were enough to reach IBR’s 240- or 300-month threshold for forgiveness.

Related: Will I Owe Taxes on IBR Loan Forgiveness After 2025?

Refunds apply only if the adjustment or forgiveness decision pushed your loan past the required number of qualifying months and you kept paying afterward.

In other words, if you reached 300 qualifying payments under IBR and made additional payments before your servicer processed the discharge. Servicers, on behalf of the Department of Education, issue refunds for any payments made after the borrower’s forgiveness eligibility date once the discharge is processed.

You won’t receive refunds for payments made before reaching the forgiveness mark or for credits that came solely from the adjustment (for example, deferment or forbearance months that filled the gap to 300). Most borrowers on 20-year tracks (such as PAYE or the new IBR 10%) have not reached 240 qualifying months yet, so refunds in those cohorts are rare.

Joint spousal consolidation borrowers haven’t yet received their payment adjustments. Borrowers with joint spousal consolidation loans must separate their combined debt into individual Direct Consolidation Loans to qualify for the one-time IDR account adjustment.

The timing of that separation determines how much credit you’ll receive:

• Borrowers who applied by June 30, 2025, will receive the full one-time payment count adjustment on their new Direct Loans once the Department begins processing adjustments after June 2025.

• Those who apply on or after July 1, 2025, will receive only a weighted-average count of qualifying IDR or PSLF months from the joint loan—no full adjustment credit.

• Those with commercially held FFEL joint consolidation loans who separate after that date won’t receive PSLF credit and will get only limited IDR credit.

Each new Direct Loan will eventually show its own individualized count once the Department applies the adjustment in later rounds.

Related: How to Separate Your Joint Spousal Consolidation Loan

If you consolidate now, your new loan won’t qualify for retroactive credit under the one-time account adjustment. You’ll start fresh, and only future months in repayment will count toward forgiveness.

Consolidation can still make sense if you’re trying to combine loans or access an income-driven plan that your current loans don’t qualify for. But if you have older FFEL loans with AES, MOHELA/Navient, or Sloan Servicing, know that new consolidations no longer receive past credit from the adjustment.

You can check your updated payment count by logging in to StudentAid.gov and opening your Aid Summary. Each loan lists its qualifying months toward income-driven repayment forgiveness.

The Education Department removed the visual IDR tracker in 2025, but a “back-end” view still shows your totals. To access it directly, go to: studentaid.gov/app/api/nslds/payment-counter/summary while signed in.

If your account shows “null” or missing counts under IBR but displays numbers for other plans like SAVE or ICR, that’s a data-sync issue, not a loss of credit. Those payments still legally count toward IBR forgiveness once the Department’s system updates.

Related: How to Fix IBR Loan Forgiveness Count

Take screenshots of your current counts and save them. They’re your best record if your data later disappears or changes.