PSLF Form (Employment Certification): How to Fill It Out, Get It Signed, and Submit It

The PSLF form certifies your qualifying employment and, once you reach 120 qualifying payments, applies for forgiveness. You complete it through the PSLF Help Tool at StudentAid.gov or on paper, an authorized official at your employer signs it, and the Department of Education processes it.

• One form, three jobs. It certifies employment, applies for forgiveness at 120 payments, and triggers a Temporary Expanded PSLF review in the same submission.

• Who signs matters more than how. Only an official your employer authorizes to certify employment can sign, and a typed or certificate-based signature gets the form rejected.

• E-sign or paper are both valid. The Help Tool sends your employer a DocuSign request; the paper form goes by mail, fax, or upload.

• Your count moves when a form is processed. Qualifying payments update when the department processes a form covering a new period of employment, with one 2026 exception covered below.

The PSLF form is the Department of Education’s combined Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Temporary Expanded PSLF (TEPSLF) Certification and Application. The separate Employment Certification Form, or ECF, no longer exists, though the name survives in HR offices and search results.

It does three things in one submission. It certifies that you worked full time for a qualifying employer during a specific period. At 120 qualifying payments, it is your application for forgiveness. And the department evaluates every submission for both PSLF and Temporary Expanded PSLF, so you file nothing extra.

The Department of Education processes it, not your servicer. The department has managed PSLF directly at StudentAid.gov since the 2024 move away from MOHELA, and forms, employer signatures, status updates, and your payment count all live in your account there. After a forgiveness application is approved, the department works with your servicer to discharge the balance and issue any refund, so the final notice may come from the servicer. MOHELA’s own site states that it does not manage PSLF.

The current version is OMB No. 1845-0110, expiring January 31, 2027. It runs 16 pages, mostly instructions and definitions, and takes about 30 minutes by the department’s estimate. On June 30, 2026, the day before it was to take effect, two federal courts vacated a 2025 rule that would have let the department disqualify employers it found to have a “substantial illegal purpose.” The department removed the employer attestation that rule had added and posted a notice that employers may keep using the current version and that the illegal-activities language “will have no effect.” The department appealed both rulings on August 27, 2026, so this could change again; PSLF changes in 2026 tracks the litigation. As of September 2026, the form asks your employer to certify your employment and nothing more.

You submit the PSLF form once a year by the department’s recommendation, again whenever your employer or employment status changes, and a final time after your 120th qualifying payment, when it becomes the forgiveness application.

Every year, as a recommendation rather than a requirement. The department recommends a form annually while you work toward PSLF; one is strictly required only when you reach 120 qualifying months and apply for forgiveness. Skip them and you will need certification from every employer across those 120 payments at the end, harder once HR staff have turned over or an employer has closed. The department suggests filing at the same time each year as your income-driven repayment renewal.

Whenever you change employers or your employment status changes. A new employer needs its own form. So does a change from full time to part time, or a break in service and return, with the same employer. The form allows one certification period, so two stints at one hospital, or a full-time period followed by a part-time one, means one form per period.

After your 120th qualifying payment. This final form is the forgiveness application. You must be working for a qualifying employer when you submit it; the department’s guidance is to mark the period “still employed” or have your employer sign in the same month as your end date. PSLF retroactivity explains why credit is retroactive while forgiveness is not.

For past employment you never certified. There is no deadline. You can certify employment with a qualifying employer at any point since October 1, 2007, and the department reviews each form under the rules in effect when it reviews it. A period rejected years ago under a stricter standard can be resubmitted.

You need five things before you open the Help Tool or the PDF: your employer’s EIN, the actual employer’s EIN if a payroll company issues your W-2, your exact employment dates and average weekly hours, an authorized official’s name and email, and Direct Loans.

Your employer’s Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN). It is in box b of your W-2. A number from a web search, a state tax ID, or an EIN on a 1099 may not be the one your employer uses for payroll, and the department will not find it in the PSLF employer database; it reports an incorrect EIN as the number one reason borrowers cannot find their employer.

The right EIN if a payroll company sits in the middle. If your employer runs payroll through a professional employer organization such as ADP, Insperity, or TriNet, your W-2 carries the PEO’s EIN, and PEOs are almost always for-profit. For PSLF you are a direct employee of the actual employer, so search and certify with its EIN, not the one on the W-2. Contracted physicians in California and Texas report the nonprofit hospital’s EIN, not their medical group’s, as PSLF for 1099 physicians explains.

Exact employment dates and your average weekly hours. Full time means an average of 30 or more hours per week, whatever your employer calls it; hours include vacation, leave, and Family and Medical Leave Act time but not volunteer time. If you combine part-time jobs to reach 30 hours, each employer files its own form; PSLF full-time vs. part-time covers the arithmetic, including the adjunct-faculty multiplier.

The name and email address of an authorized official. HR can tell you who may certify employment. If you do not have the official’s email yet, you can check a box to add it later, which starts the 30-day window described below.

Direct Loans. Only Direct Loans qualify. FFEL or Perkins loans need a Direct Consolidation Loan before those balances can be forgiven; consolidating an FFELP loan to a Direct Loan walks through the application. If you already have PSLF credit on some loans, the department strongly encourages certifying that employment before you consolidate; the consolidation entry under common mistakes below covers the weighted-average rule.

The PSLF Help Tool at StudentAid.gov/pslf generates the form from your answers, sends it to your employer for an electronic signature, and submits it without paper. The department recommends this route and says most people finish in under 30 minutes. The tool must be finished in one session, so the items above need to be in hand.

1. Log in with your FSA ID and add your employers. Add every past and current employer you have not already certified; each becomes its own form. Search by the EIN from your W-2. The database holds more than 3.7 million employers. State employees generally select the “[State] – All Employees” entry, and federal employees certify at the department level rather than by agency office.

2. The search returns one of five results. Eligible means the employer qualifies. Ineligible usually means a for-profit organization. Undetermined or Not Found means the department has not reviewed the employer yet, not that it fails; you can request a review. Split means the employer qualified for only part of your period; the department reviews your dates after you submit. The result reflects which employers qualify for PSLF, and the PSLF qualifying employers list covers the search in more depth. If the search finds nothing, enter the name exactly as it appears on your W-2 and upload the W-2; the tool flags organizations not yet in the database as likely ineligible until reviewed.

3. Enter your employment period and hours. Begin date, end date or “still employed,” full time or part time, and average weekly hours rounded up.

4. Sign your part. Confirm your information is correct and select Continue. There is no drawn signature on the borrower side of the electronic form.

5. Choose electronic or manual employer signature. For electronic, enter the authorized official’s email address. For manual, select that option, then View in My Activity to download the generated PDF for wet-ink or hand-drawn signatures.

6. Your employer receives a DocuSign email. It arrives from dse_NA4@docusign.net on behalf of Federal Student Aid and can land in spam. Your employer has 60 days to certify and sign, and can correct your dates or hours, in which case the system flags the change and emails you, or decline to certify, in which case you are notified without a reason.

7. Track it in My Activity. From there you can edit the official’s email address and send a reminder. Without a valid email within 30 days of submitting, the form switches to manual signature. Once your employer signs, the form submits automatically.

An electronic-signature error at the email step usually means an invalid address; select Previous rather than Continue and re-enter it. “Application Unavailable” or a looping tool often clears after you clear your browser history or switch browsers; if not, the Federal Student Aid Information Center is 1-800-433-3243.

You complete Sections 1, 2, and usually 4 of the paper form, an authorized official completes Section 5A, Section 5B takes alternative documentation when no one can sign, and Sections 6 through 11 are instructions. The paper form is the same one the Help Tool generates, available as a blank PDF from StudentAid.gov or as a partially completed PDF from the tool’s manual signature option. The form asks for type or dark ink, mm/dd/yyyy dates, and, for any correction, a line through the original with the change written in and initialed.

Section 1: Borrower Information. Your Social Security number, date of birth, name, address, phone, and email. Some employers, the University of Kansas for example, tell employees who email the form to HR to leave the Social Security number blank until it is ready to go to the department.

Section 2: Borrower Request, Understandings, and Certification. This section makes the form an application for forgiveness as well as a certification, and holds a checkbox to request a forbearance while a forgiveness application is processed. The form warns that those forbearance months will not count if the department finds you not yet eligible, so the box is for a borrower already at 120 qualifying payments, not for an annual certification. You sign and date at the end.

Section 3: Reminders. Instructions only. The department states here that it “highly recommend[s]” completing the form online.

Section 4: Employer Information. Six items: the EIN, employer name, employer address or website, the employment period with a begin date and either an end date or a “still employed” check, full-time or part-time status, and average hours per week rounded up. Either you or your employer can complete it. It also holds the checkbox for an employer that has closed or cannot certify your employment; checking it routes you to Section 5B.

Section 5A: Employer Certification. Completed and signed only by an authorized official, under penalty of perjury, confirming Section 4 is accurate and that you were a direct employee or a contractor a state law barred the employer from hiring directly. The official must initial any cross-out or change in Section 4 or 5A.

Section 5B: Alternative Documentation. Used only when Section 5A cannot be completed, and any month you cannot document is not certified. What to attach, and how the department reviews it, is covered below under an employer that won’t sign or has closed.

Sections 6 through 11 are instructions, definitions, where to send the form, the help line, the list of eligible repayment plans, and the Paperwork Reduction Act notice. The current plan list names the Repayment Assistance Plan, Income-Based Repayment, Pay As You Earn and Income-Contingent Repayment through June 30, 2028, the 10-Year Standard Plan, and other Direct Loan plans paying at least the 10-year standard amount, excluding the Tiered Standard and Alternative plans. Which repayment plans qualify for PSLF explains the list.

Only an authorized official can certify your employment. The form defines one as a person who, by the employer’s authority, has access to your employment or service records and may certify the employment status of the organization’s employees or former employees. For AmeriCorps and Peace Corps service, it is the official authorized to certify volunteer service.

Usually that is human resources. The department says the certifier “will often be someone in the human resources department,” and that a direct supervisor or another individual may be authorized in some cases. Large employers set their own rules: the University of Kansas says supervisors cannot sign and HR is the authorized official; the University of Michigan returns manual forms dated more than 90 days before submission or carrying an invalid signature.

You cannot sign for your employer. The borrower signs Section 2; the employer signs 5A. The same person in both roles means no certification.

Contracted physicians sign through the hospital. Under the state-law contractor exception, the authorized official is at the qualifying nonprofit facility, not at the for-profit group that issues your W-2 or 1099.

The department accepts exactly three kinds of signature on a manually signed form, a handwritten one, a hand-drawn electronic one, or an embedded image of a handwritten one, and rejects typed names and certificate-based digital signatures.

Acceptable. A handwritten signature in dark ink. A hand-drawn electronic signature made with a mouse, finger, or signature pad. A digitized image of a handwritten signature embedded on the signature line, including a scanned photo of a signature drawn on paper.

Not acceptable. A typed name, even in a font that mimics cursive, including the typed-signature option in Adobe Acrobat Reader. A certificate-based digital signature of the kind Acrobat and many corporate systems produce. The one exception is the electronic signature collected through the Help Tool’s own DocuSign request.

Both signatures are held to this: a borrower’s typed name gets the form rejected as surely as an employer’s certificate signature, and nothing is processed until it is re-signed.

When your employer has closed or will not certify your employment, you check the box in Section 4 that says so, skip Section 5A, and attach alternative documentation under Section 5B in place of a signature: W-2s for every calendar year in the period or pay stubs for every month, and for military service a DD-214 or an SCRA status report. In the Help Tool you upload the same documents during the session. The department confirms the EIN and your employment period from those records or IRS transcripts, and the form warns this “will add significant time” to the review. PSLF employer won’t sign covers documenting years when W-2s and pay stubs are missing or a former employer will not confirm them.

A manually signed form, whether signed on paper or with a hand-drawn electronic signature, reaches the Department of Education by upload, by mail, or by fax.

• Upload. Log in to StudentAid.gov and use the document upload in My Activity; a Help Tool form with the manual signature option uploads from the same place.

• Mail. U.S. Department of Education, P.O. Box 300010, Greenville, TX 75403.

• Fax. 540-212-2415.

One route is enough; if your employer signed through DocuSign, the form is already submitted and there is nothing to mail. The department does not describe a receipt for mailed or faxed forms; it emails you if a form is incomplete, and uploading through My Activity leaves a dated record. Questions about the form go to 1-888-303-7818.

Older guides, and some cached copies of the form, still carry MOHELA’s Chesterfield, Missouri address and an 866 fax number from before the 2024 transition. If your PDF shows an expiration date of 08/31/2023, it is the old version; the current one is on StudentAid.gov or comes out of the Help Tool.

The department reviews the form for completeness and checks whether your employer and loans qualify before it reaches your payment history for the certified period. Each stage can produce an email, and the status in My Activity tells you what the department is waiting on.

Action Required. You need to do something, usually because an employer email address bounced, no email was given for electronic signature, or a manual signature is still pending.

In Review. Every step on your side is done and the form is with the department. In the electronic flow it also covers employer-eligibility review and the wait for the e-signature. Forms sit here longest; how long PSLF takes to process covers current timelines.

In Progress. Your form is approved and you are waiting for forgiveness to be applied.

Completed. The department has finished with the form, approved or denied. A denial notice states the reasons, and you resume payments under your loan terms.

Closed. Your employer changed your employment period, so you resubmit through the Help Tool, or the department found the employer ineligible. A form you canceled shows as Closed or under its own “Cancelled” label.

Your count updates when a new form is processed. By the department’s stated rule, qualifying payments update only when you submit another form documenting a new period of qualifying employment. A count that has not moved in a year usually means no form has covered that year. Nothing about PSLF appears on your My Loans page until a form has been submitted and processed.

One exception, as of August 2026: the department has been lowering some counts without a new form. The department said it had found “PSLF counter code errors” dating to system changes made in May 2024, corrected the affected counts, and notified most affected borrowers; some received a “Qualifying Payment Reduction Notice” or a StudentAid.gov banner saying their count was being updated. Reporting on the corrections points to the removal of forbearance months other than processing forbearance and of months under the Extended or Graduated plans, which were never qualifying payments. July and August 2026 payments were also posting late for many borrowers.

A count that drops without a new form is usually that correction rather than a form problem, though some borrowers reported months removed in error. If months you certified and paid on time were removed, the route is a PSLF reconsideration request within 90 days of the dated letter, with your earlier count letters and payment history attached; the department says submitting multiple requests delays review, so every disputed period goes in one request.

The final application gets a second review. After the form that reaches 120 payments is approved, the department performs a final account review before discharging the balance, estimated at about 60 business days. The approval notice comes from noreply@studentaid.gov.

Every mistake below is fixed on the form side, with a corrected or additional form, a re-sent signature request, or added documentation, rather than through a reconsideration request.

The employer search finds nothing. The usual cause is a number other than the EIN in box b of your W-2, such as the state ID number printed nearby. An employer that truly is not in the database goes in through the manual-entry path in step 2 above, with the W-2 uploaded and an eligibility review requested.

The wrong EIN is on the form. The department tells employers not to change an EIN on a Help Tool-generated form unless the employee does not receive a W-2 with that number. If a PEO’s EIN slipped in, a new form with the actual employer’s EIN is the fix.

The DocuSign request never arrived or expired. The employer’s spam folder, under the docusign.net domain, is the first place it turns up. My Activity lets you correct the email address and send a reminder, and once the 60-day window has passed, a new form through the Help Tool restarts the request.

The request went to the wrong person. The email contains redirect instructions, so the recipient can forward it to the correct official without you resubmitting.

A typed or certificate signature. The form comes back and is processed only after the signer re-signs with one of the three accepted signatures above and you resubmit it.

Two employment statuses on one form. The form cannot record two statuses, so a period with a status change or a gap goes on two forms, one per period.

A missing begin date. The form’s instructions set the begin date differently for a first certification, a status change, and a return after a break. Borrowers report manual forms returned for a blank or ambiguous begin date.

A month with no documentation under Section 5B. A W-2 proves the year and the employer but not your start and end dates within it, so a partial year needs pay stubs or a transcript alongside it.

Filing a reconsideration when you meant a form. A period that has never been counted goes on a PSLF form through the Help Tool; a reconsideration request only disputes a count the department has already issued.

Consolidating before certifying. Payments before a consolidation dated after September 1, 2024 carry over as a weighted average, and the department strongly encourages certifying all qualifying employment first. A fresh form on the consolidation loan afterward puts certified employment on record for the new loan; PSLF weighted average rules explains the math.

Three other PSLF requests get confused with the form, and none of them certifies employment: buyback, reconsideration, and income-driven repayment recertification.

PSLF Buyback. You request a buyback of deferment or forbearance months through the PSLF Reconsideration page by selecting “PSLF Buyback” as the request type, and only after you have 120 months of certified qualifying employment. The PSLF form gets you to those 120 months; PSLF Buyback covers the request and its pricing.

PSLF Reconsideration. This disputes a qualifying payment count or employer determination the department has already made, filed within 90 days of the decision letter. It does not certify new employment. PSLF reconsideration walks through it.

Income-driven repayment recertification. Renewing your income for an IBR or RAP payment is a separate annual request that does not certify employment. Many borrowers file both at the same time of year, but neither substitutes for the other; student loan recertification covers the income side.