Where to Send Your Income-Driven Repayment Form
Updated on September 10, 2026
Submit your income-driven repayment request at StudentAid.gov/idr. The Department of Education recommends it because your servicer can process an electronic request directly, and it is faster than any paper route. If you need to send a paper form instead, it goes to your servicer — not to the Department.
Uploading is faster than mailing. Every federal servicer has a secure document upload tool inside your online account.
Faxing works too, and it is slower than uploading but faster than mail.
Documents and payments go to different addresses. Sending a form to the payment address delays it.
You still have to recertify every year. The pandemic-era pause on recertification is over.
Submitting your IDR request online
Apply or recertify at StudentAid.gov/idr. The Department’s own guidance is to submit there so your servicer can process the request electronically, and the same form covers a new plan, a switch between plans, and your annual recertification.
Two things make it worth using even if you have already printed the form.
It goes straight into your servicer’s queue. A paper form has to be received, opened, scanned, and keyed before anyone works it. An electronic submission skips that.
It can pull your income for you. You can consent to let the Department retrieve your tax information from the IRS, which removes the step where you hunt for a return or a pay stub, and it can carry forward to future recertifications.
If you cannot use the online application — no account access, a paper form your servicer specifically asked for, or documentation the online tool will not accept — the order that works best after that is upload, then fax, then mail.
Upload it in your online account. Every current servicer has a secure document upload tool. It is the closest paper substitute to applying online, and it produces a timestamp you can point to later.
Fax it. Slower to process than an upload, but it works, and it leaves you a transmission record.
Mail it. The slowest route, and the one where a wrong address costs weeks.
Recertification is not on hold. An income-driven plan has to be renewed every year. The pause that applied during the payment pause ended, and a missed renewal can push your payment up sharply.
Where to send your IDR form, by servicer
Send the form to the servicer that holds your loans, at its document address — which is not the address you send payments to. Every servicer keeps those separate and says so on its own contact page, and a form that lands in the payment lockbox does not get worked.
At Nelnet and CRI there is a further split: repayment-plan paperwork goes to a dedicated Enrollment Processing box, which is not the general correspondence address either.
Aidvantage — Aidvantage – Federal Student Aid Loan Servicing, P.O. Box 300001, Greenville, TX 75403-3001. Fax 866-266-0178, international 001-570-706-8563. Phone 800-722-1300.
Edfinancial — Edfinancial Services, P.O. Box 36008, Knoxville, TN 37930-6008. Fax 800-887-6130 or 865-692-6348. Phone 855-337-6884. More on Edfinancial.
MOHELA — MOHELA, 633 Spirit Drive, Chesterfield, MO 63005-1243. Fax 866-222-7060. Phone 888-866-4352. MOHELA’s own instruction is not to send payments to that address. More on MOHELA.
Nelnet — Nelnet, Attn: Enrollment Processing, P.O. Box 82565, Lincoln, NE 68501-2565. Fax 877-402-5816. Phone 888-486-4722. General correspondence goes to a different box, P.O. Box 82561. More on Nelnet.
CRI (Central Research) — CRI, Attn: Enrollment Processing, P.O. Box 82539, Lincoln, NE 68501-2539. Fax 888-462-4163. Phone 833-355-4311. More on CRI.
These five service the loans the Department of Education owns. If your loans are commercially held Federal Family Education Loans, your servicer is whoever the loan holder hired, and American Education Services handles many of them: American Education Services, P.O. Box 2461, Harrisburg, PA 17105-2461, fax 717-720-3916, phone 800-233-0557. Commercially held FFEL loans reach Income-Based Repayment but not the other income-driven plans, and FFEL parent PLUS loans and FFEL consolidation loans that repaid a parent PLUS loan do not reach it either. That gap is one reason borrowers consolidate into the Direct Loan program.
Sloan Servicing (Nelnet’s brand for the commercially held FFEL loans it services) — Sloan Servicing, Attn: Enrollment Processing, P.O. Box 87290, Lincoln, NE 68501. Phone 833-597-5626. General correspondence P.O. Box 87865. More on Sloan Servicing.
FedLoan Servicing, Granite State, Great Lakes, Navient, and OSLA no longer service federal student loans. If you are holding an old letter from one of them, your account moved — find out who has it now before you send anything.
Faxing your IDR form
Fax is a legitimate way to submit an IDR request, and the numbers are listed with each servicer above. Processing takes longer than an upload, but the form gets there and the transmission confirmation is your proof of the date you sent it.
Put your account number on every page, because pages get separated. And keep the confirmation page — it is the only record you will have if the servicer says nothing arrived.
What to gather before you submit
The form asks for your income, your family size, and your marital status, and the documentation depends on which of those you are reporting.
Income. The online application can pull your adjusted gross income from your most recent tax return through the IRS. On paper, you attach a copy of the return or a transcript.
Current income instead of a tax return. A return reports a past year. If your income has dropped since you filed, you can document what you earn now instead — a recent pay stub, or a signed statement if you have no income at all. Which document you send changes the figure your payment is built from, and a pay stub does not always produce the lower one.
Family size. Self-reported on the form. It includes you, your spouse if you have one, and children or other dependents you provide more than half the support for.
Marital status and spousal income. Whether your spouse’s income counts depends on the plan and on how you file your taxes. Our guide to income-driven repayment covers how each plan treats it.
If your servicer isn't on this list
Log in at StudentAid.gov, open “My Aid,” and select “View loan servicer details.” That page is the Department’s own record of who services each of your loans, and it is more reliable than a letter or an old bookmark. If you cannot get into the account, the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-433-3243 will tell you without a login.
Three situations leave a borrower here with no matching address.
Your loans are in default. A defaulted loan is not held by any of the five servicers above, so none of these addresses apply to it — it is handled by the Default Resolution Group. Getting out of default through rehabilitation or consolidation is what puts the loan back with a servicer and restores your repayment-plan options.
Your loans are private. Private loans never appear on StudentAid.gov and have no income-driven plans. Check whether your loans are federal or private first.
Your account just transferred. During a transfer, send the form to the servicer that currently appears on StudentAid.gov, not the one on your last statement.
FAQs
To your loan servicer, at its document address — not to the Department of Education and not to the payment address. The current addresses for all five federal servicers are listed above. Confirm which servicer has your loans at StudentAid.gov under "My Aid" before you send anything.
Yes. Each servicer publishes a fax number, and they are listed with the addresses above. Fax processing is slower than uploading the form in your online account but faster than mail, and the transmission confirmation gives you a dated record.
No. The online application at StudentAid.gov/idr covers new enrollments, plan switches, and annual recertification, and the Department recommends it because your servicer can process it electronically.
MOHELA, 633 Spirit Drive, Chesterfield, MO 63005-1243, or by fax to 866-222-7060. MOHELA asks that payments not be sent to that address — those go somewhere else, and mixing them up delays both.
Yes. Annual recertification is required, and the pandemic-era pause has ended. Missing the deadline can raise your payment to what it would be under a standard plan, so the renewal date is worth tracking even if nothing about your income has changed.
There is no reliable way to find out whether it gets rerouted. Every servicer maintains separate addresses for documents and payments precisely because they are worked by different units, so resubmit through your online account — the upload timestamps itself — rather than mailing a second copy and waiting.
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