dear god, i've had a look at that^ and its so confusing!!! with all the SLE and the adding, and subtracting and multiplying and census date and CGS!!!!!!
isnt there a 5 line summary of that lying around somewhere OMG!!!
the education department makes the whole thing a lot more complicated than it needs to be. key points are:
- unless you want to pay off your HECS debt early, then you don't need to pay anything up-front. just give your uni your TFN when you enrol and you're away, and then you don't need to think about it again for the rest of your degree. (assuming you're an australian citizen; permanent residents and NZ citizens get treated differently, and international students differently again.)
- once you start earning above a certain threshold - i think it's around $40,000pa - you'll pay somewhat more tax every year until your debt is paid off.
that's basically all there is to it. all the rest of the alphabet soup (SLE, CSP, etc etc etc) is stuff you don't really need to worry about unless you plan to work in the education bureaucracy.