How to Fill Out and Submit the PSLF Employment Certification Form

To fill out the PSLF Employment Certification Form, gather your personal and employer information, complete the form either through the PSLF Help Tool at studentaid.gov/pslf or on a downloadable PDF, have an authorized official at your qualifying employer sign it, and submit it online, by mail, or by fax. The Department of Education recommends filing one every year so your qualifying payment count stays current, and the same form doubles as your forgiveness application once you reach 120 qualifying payments.¹

What to Gather Before You Start

Have the following ready before you open the Help Tool or the PDF:

Your name, date of birth, Social Security number, contact information, and the name and account number of your federal loan servicer.
Your employer’s Employer Identification Number (EIN), the nine-digit number that appears on your W-2. Your payroll department can provide it if you cannot find it.²
The exact start and end dates of the employment period you want certified. If you are still employed, leave the end date blank.
The name, title, phone number, and professional email address of an authorized official at your employer, meaning someone with access to your organization’s employment records, usually an HR representative or a payroll manager. That person has to attest that you worked full time during the certified period.

Certifying more than one employer at the same time means a separate certification section and a separate authorized official for each one.

Confirm Your Employer Qualifies

The form only helps if the employer on it is a qualifying public service employer. Before you fill anything out, enter the EIN in the employer search tool at studentaid.gov/pslf/employer-search to check the Department of Education’s determination.² Government employers at the federal, state, local, or tribal level qualify, as do 501(c)(3) nonprofits and certain other nonprofits that do public service work.³ For PSLF, full time means averaging at least 30 hours per week, and you can combine hours from two or more part-time qualifying jobs to meet that threshold.⁴

One boundary worth knowing before you certify: employees of government contractors generally do not qualify, because the contractor is the legal employer rather than the government agency. A narrow exception exists when your role, under state law, cannot be filled by a direct employee of the qualifying organization; in that case you list the qualifying entity’s EIN rather than your direct employer’s, and an authorized official at the qualifying organization signs the form.⁵

Filing Through the PSLF Help Tool

The digital path is the fastest and the one the Department of Education prefers. Go to studentaid.gov/pslf and log in with your FSA ID. The tool walks you through each section, checks your employer’s EIN against the database of known qualifying organizations, and sends an electronic signature request straight to your employer’s authorized official through DocuSign.⁶

Warn your authorized official ahead of time that the request will arrive from dse_NA4@docusign.net on behalf of Federal Student Aid, so it does not get lost in a spam folder. Once they certify and sign, the form is submitted automatically. No printing, scanning, or mailing.⁷

Filing the PDF Manually

If your employer cannot use DocuSign, or you simply prefer paper, you have two options. You can generate a pre-filled PDF from the PSLF Help Tool by selecting “manual signature” during the process and then downloading it from the My Activity page, or you can download a completely blank PDF at studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/public-service-application-for-forgiveness.pdf.⁸

Print the form, complete every section, sign it yourself, and bring it to your employer’s authorized official for their signature. Then submit through one of these channels:

Upload a scanned copy through the My Activity page after logging in to StudentAid.gov.
Mail the signed form to U.S. Department of Education, P.O. Box 300010, Greenville, TX 75403.
Fax it to 540-212-2415.

Uploading online gives you the fastest confirmation that the form was received.⁷

Signature Rules That Get Forms Rejected

More forms get bounced back for signature problems than for anything else, so pay attention here. Both you and the authorized official have to sign, and the Department of Education is specific about what counts. For paper or manually completed forms, an acceptable signature is one of the following:⁸

Handwritten in dark ink on a physical form, which can then be scanned or faxed.
Hand-drawn electronically with a mouse, stylus, or finger on a touchscreen.
A digitized image of your handwritten signature placed directly on the signature line.

Typed names are not acceptable, even when they use a cursive-style font, and that includes the typed signature option in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Certificate-based digital signatures are also rejected. The only digital signature the Department accepts is the DocuSign signature generated through the PSLF Help Tool.⁹ Fixing a rejected signature is straightforward, but the delay can cost you weeks.

Both signatures also carry a legal weight worth noting: the form warns that anyone who knowingly makes a false statement is subject to fines, imprisonment, or both under the U.S. Criminal Code and 20 U.S.C. § 1097. You and the authorized official are both certifying that everything is true, complete, and correct.⁸

How Often to Certify

You are not required to submit the form every year, but the Department of Education recommends it, and there is a practical reason to follow that advice. Filing annually surfaces errors early: a misclassified employer, a payment that got counted as forbearance, a month that slipped through.¹ Waiting until you have hit 120 payments to submit everything at once is technically allowed, but finding a problem with your count in month 118 is far worse than finding it in month 24. Certify at least once a year while you stay at the same employer, and again every time you change employers.

If Your Employer Will Not Sign

Most employers cooperate. Some former employers have closed, reorganized, or simply refuse to sign. If a current or former employer is unable or unwilling to certify, the Department of Education may accept alternative documentation, such as a W-2 for each calendar year of the employment or pay stubs covering every month in the period you are trying to certify. Months without supporting documentation will not be approved, so pull your records together thoroughly before submitting an alternative claim.

What Happens After You Submit

The Department of Education reviews the form, confirms the employer’s eligibility, and updates your qualifying payment count. Processing takes several weeks and can stretch longer during high-volume periods. You can check status by logging in to StudentAid.gov and going to the My Activity page.¹

If you have not yet reached 120 qualifying payments, you will get a notice showing your updated count, which months qualified, and why any months were excluded, often for reasons like a non-qualifying repayment plan, a late payment, or a period of deferment or forbearance. MOHELA services PSLF-eligible loan accounts, so your loans may be transferred to MOHELA if they are not there already.¹⁰ If the form represents your 120th qualifying payment, the Department of Education begins the discharge process and your remaining Direct Loan balance is forgiven.⁸

If the count in your determination letter looks wrong, you have 90 days from the date of the letter to file a reconsideration request at studentaid.gov/pslf/reconsideration, identifying the specific periods you believe were counted incorrectly and uploading supporting documents.¹¹ Send one comprehensive request rather than multiple separate ones; duplicates slow the review.

1
Federal Student Aid. How to Manage Your Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Progress on StudentAid.gov
2
StudentAid.gov. PSLF Employer Search
3
eCFR. 34 CFR 685.219 – Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
4
Federal Student Aid. Full-Time Employment for PSLF
5
Federal Student Aid. Public Service Loan Forgiveness FAQ
6
Federal Student Aid. PSLF Help Tool
7
Federal Student Aid. Public Service Loan Forgiveness Application
8
Federal Student Aid. Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Temporary Expanded PSLF (TEPSLF) Certification and Application
9
Federal Student Aid. Tackling the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Form
10
MOHELA. MOHELA Homepage
11
Federal Student Aid. PSLF Reconsideration Request