According to Kela they have sent the preliminary decisions of the recovery of overpaid financial aid to 43 308 students in Finland.
All students the annual income limit of whose has exceeded in 2018 will receive the letter with repayment proposal. The average amount that every student should return is 860 EUR. The total amount of financial aid, which Kela are going to recover under the preliminary decisions is 37,3 EUR million. The number of students who will get such a decision increased by more than 3 500 compared to the year 2017. Nevertheless, the amount of financial aid being recovered decreased compared to the 2017 year because the most students were moved from the student housing supplement scheme over to the general housing allowance scheme.
The annual income limit varies from year to year and depend on the number of months for which a student takes out financial aid. The income limits for students in 2020 have raised up to 12,498 EUR assuming that they receive financial aid for 9 months.
Students can send a request to reduce the refunded sum or cancel the preliminary decision during one-month period providing the details of their studies and earnings. The deadline is 19 March 2020. Student can send such a request if, for example, the annual income limit was exceeded because of the income earned not during periods of active study but after graduation.
In the future, Kela is going to use the national incomes register to check the income details of financial aid recipients. After this, students will should not provide the details about their earned income to Kela. The incomes register will be used at the first time during the income checking for 2019, which Kela will conduct in 2021.
The deadline for the financial aid voluntary returns for year 2019 is the end of April 2020. If the financial aid has not been canceled and overpaid financial aid has not been returned by student itself then all overpayments will be recovered to Kela in any case and student will have to pay one-off surcharge in amount of 7,5 %. Students should control if their annual income exceeds the income limit or not.
The full information can be found at KELA website.
Published 14.02.2020, FINREPO