IDR discharge anxiety attack
Hi! I am seven payments away from PSLF and with a buyback request awaiting review. I am here in this forum because before I worked for more than a decade for a non-profit, I was in the private sector and making loan payments. In November 2025, I was notified that I was being moved from SAVE to IDR and began making payments in December. I was thrilled to be making payments again and progress towards forgiveness. In February 2026, I was notified by Department of Education that I was eligible for a discharge under IDR and that I had like 45 minutes to opt out (it was two weeks but the demand for timeliness from them was comical to me in the moment). I tried to opt out because I knew with the expiration of the American Rescue Plan provisions that IDR discharge in 2026 was subject to federal taxes. This resulted in me spending more hours than I cared to count with Mohela and them telling me they didn't know what I was talking about, that they couldn't opt me out, that they could opt me out, that they had opted me out, that they were not able to opt me out and then for two weeks my loans were discharged and they've now been reinstated.
Things got funny when I received the message from Mohela that they were discharged and it was effective November 2025. Has anyone found anything that clarifies what happens when these discharges span two calendar years from a tax status? I have seen the Taxpayer Advocate (https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/news/tax-tips/what-to-know-about-student-loan-forgiveness-and-your-taxes/2026/03/) information that states if you are notified in 2025 that the loan was eligible and it was not processed until 2026, you may not have tax liability. This sound promising but in my situation, I was not notified until 2026 and the effective date of discharge was in 2025. My debt is six figures so the tax implications are real. If I was not breaths away from PSLF, I would accept the opportunity and figure it out, but I'm a handful of payments away from tax-free forgiveness.
This forum and the PSLF forum have been so helpful while I have tried to navigate this, so many thanks to everyone who has shared. If anyone has discovered anything that clarifies this liability question I would be so grateful. I don't trust Mohela's canned response (they've been wrong about so much), I have a feedback request pending with FSA, I have questions into my Congressman, and I've requested help from my local Taxpayer Advocacy office without update. My research hasn't yielded a clear answer, but I am hoping someone on here might have had a chance to dig deeper or has a better understanding of the tax end of all this. Thanks for reading.