The One-Time IDR Account Adjustment (2025 Update)

The one-time IDR account adjustment is done. It gave borrowers retroactive credit toward the 20- or 25-year mark for income-driven forgiveness.

And now, under an October 2025 court-approved agreement between the American Federation of Teachers and the Education Department, forgiveness has restarted for borrowers who’ve hit that mark under IBR, ICR, or PAYE.

Borrowers who qualify in 2025 will also be shielded from federal taxes even if their discharge is processed in 2026.

Related: IBR Loan Forgiveness 2025

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—like commercial FFEL, Perkins, or HEAL—qualified only if they consolidated into the Direct Loan Program by June 30, 2024, and that consolidation was finalized before the cutoff date.

Loans that remained with commercial or private holders after that date did not receive retroactive credit. But those borrowers can still build new qualifying months toward forgiveness under IBR, ICR, or PAYE once enrolled in an eligible plan.

The one-time adjustment credited borrowers for more than just on-time payments. The Department of Education reviewed each loan’s full history and counted:

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

• Extended 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 after 2013.

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

Periods of default and short administrative forbearances still don’t count. But under the AFT v. Education Department court agreement, borrowers who reached 240 or 300 qualifying months through these credits will now have their loans canceled under whichever plan they’re in—IBR, ICR, or PAYE—without having to switch plans.

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

Refunds apply if you reached the 20- or 25-year threshold for forgiveness and continued making payments after that point. Once your discharge is processed, the Department of Education will refund any payments made after your final qualifying month—whether your forgiveness is under IBR, ICR, or PAYE.

You won’t receive refunds for payments made before you qualified or for extra “credit months” added through the adjustment itself. For example, if the one-time adjustment gave you the final months needed to reach 300 and you made six more payments while waiting for processing, only those six are refundable.

These refunds are required under the October 2025 AFT settlement, which directs ED to reimburse borrowers “for any payments made on the loan after the final payment that qualified them for discharge.”

Borrowers with joint spousal consolidation loans must separate their combined debt into individual Direct Consolidation Loans to receive the one-time IDR account adjustment and future forgiveness credit.

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

• Applied by June 30, 2025: You’ll receive the full one-time adjustment on your new Direct Loans when the Department applies updates in mid-2025.

• Applied on or after July 1, 2025: You’ll receive a weighted-average count of qualifying IDR or PSLF months instead of the full adjustment.

• Commercially held FFEL joint loans: If separated after that date, these borrowers won’t receive PSLF credit and will get 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 today, your new Direct Consolidation Loan will not receive retroactive credit from the one-time IDR account adjustment—you’ll start fresh, and only future qualifying months will count toward forgiveness.

Consolidation can still be strategic if you’re combining loans, removing a cosigner, or switching into a plan your current loans don’t qualify for. Once consolidated, you can still earn new forgiveness credit under IBR, ICR, or PAYE, and those payments will now be protected by the AFT court agreement requiring the Department of Education to process discharges for all eligible IDR borrowers.

For borrowers with older FFEL loans held by private lenders such as AES, MOHELA/Navient, or Sloan Servicing, consolidation into a Direct Loan is still the only way to qualify for income-driven repayment—and now, for eventual forgiveness under the supervised IDR program.

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.