Last week the prime minister was asked about changes to the HELP loan system.  In response he referred to Accord recommendations that ‘the system can be made simpler and be made fairer’ (emphasis added), and that ‘we’ll be making announcements pretty soon on that’.

‘Fairer’ probably means a lower-of HELP debt indexation formula, moving the indexation date so that more recent compulsory repayments can be taken into account, and a marginal rate repayment system to remove high effective marginal tax rates.

But what did the PM mean by ‘simpler’? I’m guessing that this refers to moving away from the current 18-threshold and rate repayment system to a system with fewer thresholds.

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