Student loans by Margaret Leora Workman; Warponie Art

So I haven’t been able to get a job. When you receive a w-2 that income is ‘taxable income’. I still have to pay taxes on landlord income but it’s not technically called ‘taxable income’ because I have to save up money to pay the IRS when I file taxes, as it’s not already collected by the IRS during the year. Every year that I haven’t been able to get a job I apply for the Income based Repayment plan for my student loan and I get a 0$ amount to pay because they only want payments to be based off of taxable income (w-2 income) as I read that information about the IDR plan. The cs agent at my loan servicer agreed with that today. She said yes it’s only taxable income they that look at, but then she stated that they might look at other options as well. I wondered what that meant! So this year is the first year that this has not worked and I thought that it had worked, unfortunately. I have been sent to collections by my loan servicer, nelnet, and when I stated that I am unemployed they don’t care, they are still wanting me to pay around $185-200 dollars per month for a loan payment. My credit score has then a hit even though they said that it wasn’t technically in collections! The cs agent won’t allow me reapply over the phone, I have to get the application downloaded and I have to send it to them. Even though for the last 5 years I have applied over the phone! Studentaid.gov says that it’s in the process of bringing over my information from the IRS so they can’t put any information about it in my account in student aid.gov. But that has said that for several months. It’s highlighted in yellow at the top. And the loan servicer will not help me even though I have no job and I have been trying to get a job actually they still want to charge me around $200 for an IDR payment so now I’m in collections. And they don’t want to put it into administrative forbearance….And I have no idea what to do. I have an interview on Friday for a job! So I might get it, but what if I don’t? What is happening with this whole situation of student loans, loan servicers, student aid.gov, and the Department of Education?