When you are disabled

Reduction of debt for disabled persons.

You can have your debt deleted if:

  • you are least 40% or 50% disabled
  • you are in receipt of disability benefit
  • your income is below NOK 522,747 in 2023

Disabled people can have their debt deleted

If you become disabled, Lånekassen (the Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund) may delete all or part of your debt.

You must be in receipt of disability benefit

You must be in receipt of disability benefit by the National Insurance Scheme at the time of your application for deletion of debt.

You must be at least 50% disabled. If you received AAP (work assessment allowance) from NAV (the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration right up until a decision was made about your disability benefit, then being 40% disabled is enough.

If you live abroad and do not receive disability benefit from the National Insurance Scheme in Norway, you can apply for deletion of your debt if you have been granted benefits by another country which grants similar disability benefits.

If you start receiving retirement pension instead of disability benefit, you cannot apply for deletion of debt according to the disability rules.

Wait to apply until you have been granted disability benefit

You must have been granted disability benefit from the National Insurance Scheme before applying to Lånekassen for the deletion of your debt. In the meantime, you can use other payment relief schemes. You can apply for the deletion of interest if you receive APP, are ill or in another situation that entitles you to deletion. You can also apply for payment deferral.

Your income determines the amount of debt that can be deleted

Your debt will only be deleted if your personal and capital income is below NOK 522 747 in 2023. This applies if you do not have children under the age of 16 who you provide for. If you have children under the age of 16, you can add NOK  17 068 per child in order to see which threshold applies to you.

Returns on the assets of children shall not be taken into account if the assets are managed by the County Governor (Statsforvalteren)

Income limits for previous years

You should include both your social security benefits and your work income. Child benefit and child pension for children over 16 years of age should not be included.

If you have received arrears payment, these can be disregarded if you submit documentation that they apply to a previous year.

Debt is reduced to fixed amounts

How much debt you will be left with and how much you will pay off each month, i.e. your monthly instalments, is limited and is based on your income, irrespective of how much debt you have.

The following limits and totals apply in 2023:

Gross personal and capital income New debt New instalment
NOK 0-362,538 NOK 0 NOK 0
NOK 362,539-402,470 NOK 73,269 NOK 783
NOK 402,471-441,155 NOK 85,446 NOK 939
NOK 441,156-481,978 NOK 97,801 NOK 1,107
NOK 481,979-522,747 NOK 109,978 NOK 1,261

You should remember to add NOK 17,068 to the income limit for each child under the age of 16. Children are regarded as being under the age of 16 up to and including the year.

Who is regarded as being a child? 

  • your own children, including children for whom you pay maintenance 
  • the children of your spouse, if you live with them for at least 40 percent of the time 
  • the children of your partner, if you and your partner also have your own children. You must live with these children for at least 40% of the time
Go to application

Terminated loan

If your loan has been
terminated you can
also have your debt deleted

If your loan has been terminated and temporarily transferred to the Norwegian National Collection Agency, you can still apply to have your debt deleted if you are disabled.

Permanent transfers to the Norwegian National Collection Agency

If your loan has been permanently transferred to the Norwegian National Collection Agency, you no longer have entitlements with Lånekassen. You can then apply for remission from the Norwegian National Collection Centre.

Repayment deferral

Everyone can defer repayment
36 times

During the repayment period, everyone can defer their bill up to 36 times, i.e. the equivalent of three years in total. You do not need to provide any specific reasons for deferred repayment.

Please note that the repayment period will be longer, since you will have to pay the bill later than planned, and that interest will be added to your loan even during periods when you do not pay. As a result, you must pay more interest overall than you would have done if you had not deferred repayment. If you defer one bill, we will extend the repayment period by one month. If you defer two bills, we will extend it by two months, and so on.

You can both defer bills you have already received and future bills. If you defer bills that you have not yet received, we will not send you a bill.

Additional repayment deferrals due to the coronavirus

Due to the coronavirus epidemic, you will be able to defer repayments of bills due between March 2020 and the end of December 2022 without using any of your 36 repayment deferrals.

Low income and illness, AAP, unemployed
or other special circumstances may entitle you to the deletion of interest.
Living in Finnmark or Nord-Troms
Your can have your dept deleted if you live in Finnmark or Nord-Troms.

You will first receive a preliminary response

You will receive a final answer when your tax assessment is ready.

You will not receive any bills while you are waiting for a final answer

You will receive a preliminary response to your application before your debt is actually deleted. The reason for this is that we have to wait for information about your income from the Norwegian Tax Administration before we can make any final decisions about whether or not you will be entitled to have your debt reduced. This means that we cannot provide a final answer until the summer after the year in which you applied, when your tax assessment is ready.

We use the income figures provided by the Norwegian Tax Administration when processing applications.

Once you have received a preliminary response, we will stop sending bills to you while we wait for information about your income. Interest will be added during this period, but if your application is approved, this interest will subsequently be either fully or partially deleted.

If your application for debt deletion is not approved, you must start paying at the usual rate once you have received a final answer. Your repayment period will be extended by the amount of time during which you received no bills. You will therefore have to pay slightly more in total, because interest will have accrued for the period during which you did not have to make any payments.

You can apply several times

If your application is rejected or only part of your debt is deleted, you can re-apply during a subsequent income year if your income is lower then.

Decisions can be revoked if you receive a new grant or education loan

If you receive a grant or loan for education before 10 years have passed, any decisions about the deletion of debt may be revoked.

Relevant rules