Sources

One document settles most of the numbers on this site

The RISE final rule — 91 Fed. Reg. 23768, FR Doc. 2026-08556, published 1 May 2026 and effective 1 Jul 2026 — rewrote 34 C.F.R. parts 674, 682 and 685, and three of the five rule sets above are read from it. It was retrieved in full from govinfo.gov, which serves the identical GPO text, because eCFR and the Federal Register's own site redirect every automated request to a block page.

What it settles, verbatim: RAP's bracket table at § 685.209(b)(2) — a flat $120 a year at or below $10,000 of adjusted gross income, then 1% rising by a point per $10,000 to a 10% ceiling. The $50 per-dependent reduction and the fact that it is applied to the monthly figure rather than the annual one. The $10 floor. The interest waiver at § 685.209(h)(4)(i), which waives rather than capitalises. The $50 principal match. RAP's 360-payment clock, and the absence of any “lesser of” clause capping RAP at the Standard payment — the omission that makes the plan uncapped, which is the single most consequential fact the engine encodes.

The same document settles the older plans: old IBR at 15% of discretionary income over 300 payments, new IBR and PAYE at 10% over 240, ICR at 20% against a 100% poverty multiplier, with an alternative amortisation running 12 yrs; the four Tiered Standard balance tiers, the last running 25 yrs; the 1 Jul 2028 end of PAYE and ICR; where a borrower who does not elect a plan is placed on that date; and the restriction that limits anyone with a loan disbursed on or after 1 Jul 2026 to RAP or the Tiered Standard.

What it does not settle, and cannot: ICR's income-percentage factor, which § 685.209(f)(4)(i)(A) assigns to a Federal Register notice the Department publishes annually — a separate document that has not been located, leaving that factor at an unverified 1.0 in the engine. The Graduated plan's step interval, because the regulation prescribes only “payments at two or more levels” and sets no spacing; the 24-month step is a servicer convention. And anything to do with tax, which lives in a different title of the code. Last read 15 Aug 2026. What would move it: a new Department rulemaking or an amendment to the Higher Education Act — re-checked each 1 July, the anniversary of the rule taking effect.

The poverty guidelines set the floor under three plans and touch RAP not at all

The HHS table published by ASPE settles one input: the protected income subtracted before an income-driven payment is computed. The 2026 figures are $15,960 for the first person and $5,680 for each additional person in the contiguous 48 states and DC, $19,950 and $7,100 in Alaska, and $18,360 and $6,530 in Hawaii. IBR and PAYE protect 150% of that figure; ICR protects 100%.

What it does not settle is any RAP figure. RAP is computed on gross adjusted gross income with no exempted income at all, so a change to this table moves every IBR, PAYE and ICR payment on the site and leaves RAP byte-for-byte identical. One further subtlety the regulation settles and the table does not: student loan repayment uses the guidelines currently in effect, not the prior year's — which is the opposite of how the same table is used for health insurance subsidies. Last read 15 Aug 2026. What would move it: HHS publishes a new table every January, and when it does a new dated file is created rather than this one edited, so an older scenario keeps resolving to the guidelines that were in force when it ran.

The tax sources settle whether forgiveness is taxed, not what it would cost you

26 U.S.C. § 108(f) settles two things. § 108(f)(5) excluded discharged student debt from income only for discharges “after December 31, 2020, and before January 1, 2026”; that window has closed, so a balance forgiven under RAP or IBR today is cancellation-of-debt income. § 108(f)(1) permanently excludes a discharge conditioned on working a period of time in certain professions for a broad class of employers — the provision PSLF relies on, with no sunset. IRS Topic 431 was read as a live cross-check and still describes the same closing date, which is evidence the exclusion was not quietly extended.

What these sources do not settle is the number in your results. The 22% marginal rate the engine applies to a taxable forgiven balance is a flat modelling estimate for ranking purposes, not a regulatory figure and not verifiable as one: your real rate depends on the forgiven amount stacking on top of your other income in the discharge year. State treatment diverges from federal and is not modelled at all. Neither is tax advice, and neither should be read as a prediction of what you will owe.

One caveat sits under the first paragraph and is not resolved. The statutory text was obtained from the 2024 edition of the U.S. Code, because the House's own code server refused connection; a later amendment to § 108(f) therefore cannot be ruled out from a primary source. The rule file records both tax citations as last verified 8 Aug 2026. What would move this: Congress restoring the lapsed exclusion, which it can do retroactively. Re-checked every January, alongside the bracket assumption.

Three citations here have never been opened

Two point at a CRS product and at P.L. 119-21 on congress.gov, which returns 403 to every automated client; a third cites the same public law from the plan-terms file. None has been read, so none is treated as discharging anything, even though every figure they would support is independently verified against the RISE rule text above. A link that has not been opened is an open item.

There is a second reason to be careful with those two. The RISE rule consistently calls P.L. 119-21 the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act”, while the citation label on this site calls it the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”. One of those short titles is wrong, and the question cannot be settled from a document nobody could fetch. The label is left as it is and flagged rather than silently corrected to the more likely-looking option.

What is still open

A primary-source pass on 15 Aug 2026 read the RISE rule in full and closed the three items this page previously listed as pending — the 2026 poverty guidelines, the exact Tiered Standard brackets, and RAP's behaviour at exact $10,000 multiples, where the regulation's “more than $X and not more than $Y” construction puts a boundary income in the lower band. What remains open is listed above in the section for each source: ICR's annual factor, the Graduated step interval, the assumed marginal rate, the 2024 code edition, and the three unopened citations. The engine additionally models only one limb of each of the two-limb PAYE and IBR new-borrower tests, which the regulation does settle but the form does not yet ask about — that one is a modelling gap rather than a sourcing gap, and it is described on the methodology page.

None of those gaps has been filled with an estimate. Where a source could not be reached, the encoded value stays as it is and the gap is recorded. How errors get corrected is covered in the editorial policy; rule changes appear in the changelog within 48 hours.

Why this page cannot disagree with the calculator

The table at the top is not maintained. It is the citation array of each rule file, read through the same function the simulation calls to resolve which rules apply on a given date — today that composite is rap-2026-07-01 + plan-terms-2026-07-01 + poverty-guidelines-2026 + tax-2026. A figure cannot be corrected in the engine and left stale here, because there is no second copy of it here to leave stale. The same is true of every last-verified date on this page: moving one means editing the rule file it belongs to.