The Universities Accord Act 2025, approved on August 2, 2025, introduces significant changes to study and training support loan repayments that will benefit most borrowers:
New calculation method for compulsory loan repayments.
Increased repayment threshold for the 2025-26 financial year.
Reduced repayment amounts for most individuals with study and training support loans.
Implementation Date
These changes take effect for payments with a Date Paid date on or after September 24, 2025.
📌Note: There's no need to recalculate withholding for payments made before September 24, 2025.
Action Required for Payroll Processing
Before processing your first payroll on or after September 24, 2025, please complete these essential steps:
Download and update your tax scales. See: Download and import tax scales.
Verify the tax scales have been updated:
Navigate to Setups, Payroll, Payroll Options, Tax Details.
Verify Effective for payment dates shows 24/09/2025.
Check Tax Impost 1 and 3 details have updated:
Navigate to Setups, Payroll, Payroll Options, Tax Impost 1 Details tab. The Description should now display as Study & Training Support Loan Obsolete
Navigate to Setups, Payroll, Payroll Options, Tax Impost 3 Details tab. The Description should now display as Study & Training Support Loan Sept 2025.
📌Note: the update of the tax scales will change the layout in the Employee Masterfile, Tax tab, Tax Impost Details task area.
Before the tax scales update, the screen will look like this:
After the tax scale update, it will display as below:
Identify Employees with Study and Training Loans:
You'll need to update employees currently subject to Study and Training Loan deductions. To identify affected employees:
Go to: Payroll, Masterfiles, Employee Details, Enquire.
Click into the Employee Code field.
On your keyboard, select: F2 (Find), F11 (Output) to open the List Wizard.
Click the Add Columns button.
Find impost1 from the field list. Double-click it to add to the columns displayed.
Select Print All. (You can export the file to Excel or other formats as required in this screen).
Identify the employees where impost1 = Y.
Update to the correct tax impost for employees with Study and Training Loans:
Each identified employee from Step 4 will need to have the Tax Impost updated on their Employee Masterfile. To do this:Go to Payroll, Masterfiles, Employee Details, Maintain.
Select the required Employee Code.
From the Tax tab, Tax Impost Details task area, untick Study & Training Support Loan Obsolete, and tick Student & Training Support Loan Sept 2025.
Click Accept(F9) to save the changes.
Repeat this process for all identified employees.
Possible messages you may receive after applying the settings above
There has been an issue found in some instances where after making the changes above to the employee Masterfiles, when you first re-log into Attaché, you may will receive this message:
Select No to this message. (If yes, it will un-tick the tax impost 3 settings you've set in the section above.
A second message will appear:
Again, select No to this message. You should only have to do this process once. To check the settings are correct, go back in and check your employees with Study and Training loans are set correctly in the Employee Masterfile, Tax tab, Tax Impost Details task area as per steps above.
This issue will be resolved with the release of Attaché version 25.1.1 onwards.