SA - Fully repaid student loan

[eb321]

Hi all,
Hoping for some confirmation on what I need to do on my tax return please.
I am employed and self-employed.
In 2016/17 I made a one off payment to clear my student loan. The SLC sent a stop notification and my employer stopped taking repayments. I received a loan termination letter from SLC. My employer took £1600 in the first few months of 16/17.
I am now completing my tax return and one of the first questions asks if I began student loan repayments before 6/4/17. Yes, they started in 2008. However if I choose yes and enter what my employer took in 16/17, the final calculation says I owe over £5000 in student loan repayments!
I called the SA helpline, who tried to transfer me to the "specialist department", but they were unavailable. So the helpline told me to complete the tax return and then call back after 72 hours to get it adjusted. I wasn't convinced that's the way forward and might end up in a drawn out process with HMRC, so I called the SLC. They confirmed a stop notification had been sent, and they advised that I choose "No" on the SA and leave it at that.
Having looked again at the "?" on the SA form, it says:
"If you have an ICR Student Loan for which repayment began before 6 April 2017, select 'Yes', from the drop-down menu otherwise select 'No'" (my bold)
I don't have one anymore, as it's been repaid.
So can I safely ignore what the SA helpline said, and just choose "No"? The lady said she would leave a note on the system.
Thanks as usual for the advice.

[AmanSood]

on the basis that you have paid your loan in full and nothing is outstanding then I wouldn't see an issue with clicking No to the question.

[Dhlittle]

I’m having the same problem having paid off my loan with voluntary payments. SA doesn’t account for this and wants me to pay what it has calculated I owe. Not sure whether to tick no or pay and somehow claim it back

[eb321]

Thank you AmanSood.
I am going to choose No. I haven't got £5k lying around so I think it's the best option, even if I could claim it back.
I saved a screenshot of the HMRC quote I mentioned in the original post, just in case.

[robbob]

I’m having the same problem having paid off my loan with voluntary payments. SA doesn’t account for this and wants me to pay what it has calculated I owe. Not sure whether to tick no or pay and somehow claim it back

If the sa liability will overpay on the student loans you have the option to submit the return (tick the box to advise the the loan will be paid off within 2 years) with the liability calculated in full then you ring hmrc and advise that the collected amount is too much and hmrc will revise the figure down to what is needed to clear the loan balance - this takes some time as they need to get the balance due from student loans. There should be no need to overpay as the calculation when adjusted will all be dated as if the lower figure had always been calculated - the only difficulty will be if you don't know how much needs to be paid.