Under the current tax code, the general rule is that a 10% penalty applies to early distributions from qualified retirement accounts. There are six exceptions to that rule, one of which is paying qualified higher education expenses, like tuition.
However, using an early distribution to pay down a student loan does not qualify as an exception. In short, the exception allows people to avoid the 10% penalty to avoid incurring student loan debt, but not to pay down/off existing student loan debt.
This petition's goal is to amend the current tax code to explicitly expand the penalty exception on early distributions from qualified retirement accounts to pay qualified higher education expenses to include paying off existing student loan debt.