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The House's Tax Bill Levies a Tax On Graduate Student Tuition Waivers (nytimes.com)
Camel Pilot writes: The new GOP tax plan -- which just passed the House -- will tax tuition waivers as income. Graduate students working as research assistants on meager stipends would have to declare tuition waivers as income on the order of $80,000 income. This will force many graduate students of modest means to quit their career paths and walk away from their research. These are the next generation of scientists, engineers, inventors, educators, medical miracle workers and market makers. As Prof Claus Wilke points out: "This would be a disaster for U.S. STEM Ph.D. education." Slashdot reader Camel Pilot references a report via The New York Times, where Erin Rousseau explains how the House of Representatives' recently passed tax bill affects graduate research in the United States. Rousseau is a graduate student at M.I.T. who studies the neurological basis of mental health disorders. "My peers and I work between 40 and 80 hours a week as classroom teachers and laboratory researchers, and in return, our universities provide us with a tuition waiver for school. For M.I.T. students, this waiver keeps us from having to pay a tuition bill of about $50,000 every year -- a staggering amount, but one that is similar to the fees at many other colleges and universities," he writes. "No money from the tuition waivers actually ends up in our pockets, so under Section 117(d)(5), it isn't counted as taxable income." Rousseau continues by saying his tuition waivers will be taxed under the House's tax bill. "This means that M.I.T. graduate students would be responsible for paying taxes on an $80,000 annual salary, when we actually earn $33,000 a year. That's an increase of our tax burden by at least $10,000 annually."
It's not a complete loss. You can still research new ways to flip hamburgers at McDonalds. They called this "trickle down economics" in the 80s. You've just been trickled on.
Good, the universities' system of indentured servitude needs to be called out. Either the tuition is part of their pay, in which case it needs to be handed over to the student, or it's not, in which case, they're working for less than minimum wage and need to be paid appropriately. This shit was unethical when coal companies did it in the Appalachians, it's just as wrong now when the ivory tower does it.
This "tax cut" 10 years out fucks the 99% to help out the 1%. Everything I hear about it is wrong. It's truly amazing how the R's can't avoid putting the booger hook on the bang switch, taking off some tootsies in the process.
So anyone who doesn't work for the university but goes there has to earn $80,000 a year and pay taxes on it. Really, there should just be a tax deduction for paying tuition instead. I thought there was already, but I could be wrong, so they still shouldn't need to pay taxes on that. Depends how they write that.
If they taxed the scholarships of football player, that would get a lot of people's attention.
Just FYI, any time you are given something of value, it is income. Someone lets you live in their house for free? Income. Someone writes off a debt instead of collecting it? Income. Someone waives a fee they normally charge? Income. A friend gives you an interest-free loan, or even just at below-market interest rates? The IRS has tables to calculate how much income you are required to report. I'm kinda astonished that these tuition waivers weren't always taxed, since everything else is.
There is an exemption for gifts, up to $13,000 per person per person per year. (not a typo) They must be bona fide gifts with no strings or conditions.
See that "Preview" button?
Without these waivers, you would have to work like the rest of us. Instead, you get free education.
Fuck you, whiny children. Get a job.
Get some knowledge dumb-ass; they do work. From The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students:
I’m a graduate student at M.I.T., where I study the neurological basis of mental health disorders. My peers and I work between 40 and 80 hours a week as classroom teachers and laboratory researchers, and in return, our universities provide us with a tuition waiver for school. For M.I.T. students, this waiver keeps us from having to pay a tuition bill of about $50,000 every year ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why is removing a tax deduction classified as LEVYING a tax when it is on something leftists want, but cutting taxes on corporations is classified as taking money from the poor?
All taxation is theft. It is the violent, forceful confiscation of the property of another. The only ethical tax rate is 0.
Then move to Somalia you whiny motherfucker.
" that other people have to pay for, "
... i'll wait... ... ...
Um, proof?
thought so.
next?
It's called tuition. Other students have to pay for it. These particular students don't. They get the valuable thing as compensation. That's taxable, but they've been getting away without paying taxes on it. Simple as that. I can tell you, personally, didn't get very far in school.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
When you're in graduate school for a doctorate it lasts 4 years plus. Typically, you're only taking actual classes for the first 1.5 to 3 years. After that, it's more like an apprenticeship than school. You're signed up for "classes" that don't have lectures, tests, writing assignments, or etc. It's a way to give you academic credit, on paper, for the process of conducting research that the university makes money on. That, and a way to claim people who are acting in every way as apprentice employees are students.
So: an institution pays itself money to cover the privilege or working for it, and you expect people to pay taxes on that? And we're supposed to trust the institution's assessment of what it provides is worth, considering that almost nobody pays for it out of pocket? You realize that the entire reason for nominal tuition being as high as it is is because it allows the schools to enact Price Discrimination, so they can get more money from students who they assess to have more, right?
What Mr. Rousseau is speaking of is called bartering.
Bartering is a Taxable transaction.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Or, the university that's using tens of hours of their time every month as staff paid for with free tuition could ... start compensating them for that time with actual money, or lower tuition to a rational level for everybody and stop playing games by charging huge prices for some, and giving it away to others. A change they could make instantly, at any time.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
must pay tuition to work = Minimum wage violation.
What about that angel or taxing at the employee rate tuition rate.
In the early 1990s this tax on tuition waivers as income was proposed, I believe it never passed back then.
I had just finished my masters' but I remember being incensed at the economics of it. With tuition waivers, I was living on $1200/month as a teaching assistant and getting my degree. Without tuition waivers, I would have been paying tax on $3000/month total "income" which would have taken away about half of my actual cash income - turning my situation from independent and sustainable to one of dependence on my parents to continue to foot the bills for my education. Other majors' TA salaries were much lower, and it would have turned them from earning small pocket money while getting a degree into paying out of pocket to cover the taxes.
Face value of tuition is a farce, so many students are given tuition waivers, scholarships, reduced rates, etc. Taxing it at face value would be like paying sales tax on the sticker price of a car, regardless of what you negotiated it down to; but worse, cars are only marked up 20%, I'd put average tuition markup closer to 60% at many of the "higher priced" institutions.
The House GOP members are simply delivering what their constituents want.
And by "constituents" I of course mean their rich donors.
I stole this Sig
I'm hearing this thinking "how is this different than personal mileage on my company car?" It isn't, it's a fringe benefit. And if it is a fringe benefit, then it's considered income. At the very least, its taxation should be modified under existing tuition tax law.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
It is income. It is taxable.
Some day, hopefully soon, we're going to have a Harvey Weinstein moment about these tuition costs and the criminal cabal that is the university employees, administrators, and loan companies. Because someone is spending that $50k income from that student's tuition.
I'm glad the tax exempt status is going away. The only way this college crime syndicate is going to fall is when it hurts everyone everywhere.
Then we'll all have the Weinstein Effect: "Hey that college rap$d me!" "You too, huh? They rap$d me too but I didn't say anything at the time" "#metoo, they fondl$d my tuition" "Well, I didn't get rap$d but the college stood right in front of me and raised tuition by 15% per year. I still have PTSD from that!"
There a lot of bad people in this world and I'm absolutely certain anyone employed, owning, or managing a college nowadays or any business surrounding it is going to hell first. It's unconscionable what humanity has allowed to happen with education costs and the mortgaging of futures.
student athletes and unforeseen consequences with this.
I can see Minimum wage violations
laws about Company scrip (must live on site and must take classes) you get them for free but are locked in and taxed at the full retail rate.
Being forced to pay for stuff (IRS sees as income) you can't really make full use of (you must miss class for teams games / other needs)
disability employment discrimination / disability employment accommodations issues (under IRS rules student athletes seen as employees getting an income)
workers comp issues (under IRS rules student athletes can be seen as employees getting an income)
they are seen as employees by the IRS and they use that to make unionize pass the northwestern case was close but what the IRS says may push it over the edge
Only if you discount the fact the student is TEACHING and doing research work for free.
Hint, the waver is more like trading labor for a degree at the end of the term. If you eliminate this then you have to pay them for much more for the work they are doing. This is a social trade off where the state benefits from cheap labor.
If you see it for what it really is, Trump's tax plan is attempting to punish blue states.
Without these waivers, you would have to work like the rest of us. Instead, you get free education.
They are working. They are paying for their education with their labor. The government values a highly educated workforce, so it provides tax incentives to increase the number of people who can afford an education. This simply reduces government funding and reduces the quality of education in our country. That is all.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
This is what happens you elect billionaire assholes as president, who have no agenda and loyalty but to their other billionaire asshole friends.
The entirety of this tax bill is cutting corporate taxes, cutting taxes on the wealthy, and essentially giving short term relied or tax hikes to the people with less money under the bullshit excuse that cutting corporate taxes and tax on the wealthy this will somehow benefit everyone else. There is NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE trickle down economics has any benefit for anybody except the wealthy.
All you dumb fucking morons who voted for this ass clown thinking you'd see some benefit? Boy are you stupid fuckers in for a surprise. They're going to raise your taxes, cut your healthcare, and pretend like somehow this is intended to improve your lives.
The entire system of economics the Republicans adhere to is a complete lie and a scam. And anybody who tells you it works and improves lives is either an outright bullshit artist, or too fucking stupid to have even a basic grasp of economics. The so called Austrian School of economics is basically greedy assholes trying to put some mystery math of how looking out for their own interests is somehow supposed to benefit society as a whole. It's a complete fucking lie.
Face it America, you've elected a crooked con man, who is appointing billionaire assholes to oversee your state institutions, when all they have in mind is tearing those apart so they can profit from it.
America is a fucking joke. The problem is you somehow expect the rest of the world to fund your avarice and bullshit. Build your wall, and then do us the courtesy of dying en masse, killing one another, and hopefully taking out some of these rich assholes while you do it.
You deserve this kind of tax plan. I'm afraid there is no sympathy for what America does to itself ... we simply don't care if America lives or dies.
You know, there's absolutely nothing to stop the colleges from dropping their prices to what students actually pay so that this isn't anywhere near as much of a problem. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if the colleges do this because there's a really fucked up financial incentive for them in pretending that college tuition actually costs $40,000 per year.
I can understand why there's a desire to subsidize graduate education (and I can also understand why plenty of people don't want to have to pay for it as well), but all the same time it's a clearly a mess with all kinds of financial chicanery and shell games going on.
You get a return on taxation in the form of property rights, roads, schools, police forces, military protection, criminal justice, ...
Maybe the real problem is that it's extraordinarily expense for the average person to get a university education in the US. To adjust for this, some tax breaks were added. Now that gets eroded so they can pay their "fair share". The net result is a less educated populace. Not a good long-term result.
Why is removing a tax deduction classified as LEVYING a tax when it is on something leftists want, but cutting taxes on corporations is classified as taking money from the poor?
Yet another unbalanced anti-left strawman argument from an AC. Normally I'd ignore it, but somebody modded it up.
Under current US tax law, the tuition waiver is not considered income. Now the Rs in the house want to consider it as such. The end result is that graduate students would have an enormous increase in their tax burden, so much so that many may need to abandon their studies. That sure sounds like "levying a tax" to me.
Normally I'd think that neither leftists nor rightists want to discourage people from pursuing graduate degrees. Now I'm not so sure. If only the rich can afford to go to school, then only the rich will profit from the rewards of education. Is this what Rs want?
As for taxes on corporations, let's just deal with a few points here. First of all, an oft-repeated mantra is that the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. But that ignores the numerous deductions and exemptions that businesses use to reduce their effective tax rate to something that is about average when compared with the rest of the world. Nevertheless, companies find and use tax havens (like in Ireland) where they can stash their cash and avoid paying US taxes. With a reduction in corporate tax rates, I would not be surprised if these foreign tax havens further reduce their tax rates to keep US companies from repatriating their money. That won't be good for either them or the US. And even if that money is repatriated, what guarantee do we have that it will result in more jobs? Companies will still keep their manufacturing outside the US if it's profitable to do so.
All taxation is theft. It is the violent, forceful confiscation of the property of another. The only ethical tax rate is 0.
Good luck with that. Sovereign nations have been taxing their citizens for pretty much all of recorded history.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Youngsters like you have a lot of learning to do. When you graduate high school and move on to college, or a to work life, you'll eventually come to see all the things that this country could not do without a pool of money. The roads you drive on, the basic research that leads to medical and engineering advances, even the Internet, would be impossible without taxation. Taxation is not theft, it's simply expecting citizens to contribute to a collection of beneficial services.
It's unfortunate that your high school curriculum is probably so simplified that you've been duped into believing something so simplistic and naive. The time is now, before you enter college, to accept that your limited life experience has not yet allowed you to comprehend the complexities of the world. It's not a personal insult -- many of us go through the stage where our ability to make (more or less) logical arguments exceeds our legitimate knowledge of the world. But the greatest barrier to your future learning as a young adult is your rigid certainty that you know all there is to know about the world. The sooner you acknowledge your limited experience, the sooner you will begin to understand the complexity around you.
Best of luck in your future schooling.
It is income. It is taxable.
I wasn't disputing that idea, just the assertion that they don't work. Sorry for the confusion.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... and in turn, reduces the number of intelligent, motivated and educated foreign students who will move to the USA.
In turn the workforce will become less educated, productivity will drop and the USA will slide down the wealth tables.
The influence of the USA worldwide will also reduce because there will be fewer students who get an advanced education in the USA and return to their home country, taking with them American values and mind share.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Why should students go to an expensive, reputable college only to be taught by other students? That's cheap, ineffective and retarded. Teachers should teach, students should learn.
Teachers (aka tenured faculty members) do teach. They just don't do all of the teaching. Nor could they. There's just too much to do.
Part of the job of a graduate student is to assist with teaching, because that's part of the academic training they're getting. They're learning to be practitioners in their field, and that includes teaching it.
It's unusual for a graduate student to be a course instructor. Usually they lead tutorials, grade papers, assist in laboratory classes or seminars, and so on.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Tax breaks are functionally government funding, aren't they?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
but you are not billed full price company car by the IRS and that cost pulls you under min wage.
Under this you are forced to buy something to do your job your cost $0 income by the IRS $$$$$ and that income is more then your pay.
Let's say Mcdonalds give workers free high cost uniforms to there works that they must use and they do get to use them out side of work so the IRS sees them as income. The uniforms have a list price of $8K-$12K /year = a big tax bill for some makeing around $15K a year pre tax.
Or they could use scholarships. Or, they could stop charging SOME students $80,000, and other students $10, and reduce tuition across the board. And pay actual value of what the grad students are doing. Or is it possible that the grad students aren't necessarily actually DOING anything worth $80,000?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It is income.
Perhaps, but irrelevant because...
It is taxable.
...that depends on tax laws, which God knows are highly fungible.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
and open a big can of worms by makeing them W2 employees.
In general, all income is taxable. This merely clarifies that such things are income that need to be reported.
If an employer gives an employee $20,000 in salary as actual money, the employee has to declare that as income and pay applicable tax on that. If the employer gives the employee a car worth $20,000 the employee has to declare that as income and pay the same tax on it. If the employer (the university in this case) gives the employee x amount of free tuition that they would otherwise have to pay for, why shouldn't that be taxed?
This will make TU more attractive. I wonder what the TU mascot is. Probably a pussycat.
Then be honest. The vast majority of the middle class takes the standard deduction, which doubles under the "R's" tax plan.
The vast majority of the middle class making under $50k yearly per year take the standard deduction, but the majority of middle class families making over $75k yearly itemize their deductions. This plan does help the majority of middle class Americans a little, and helps wealthy Americans a lot. This is all paid for by the upper middle class, middle class citizens in many blue states, and all citizens overall by increasing national debt. It is the bill that wealthy donors have been working for years to get passed under the illusion it will help the economy. In truth it is merely a huge tax break for the wealthy.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Over here in communist Sweden, the salary for a PhD student is roughly $80k/year and tuition is $0...
Because you apparently don't understand what a research student is. It's someone who's considered trained in the subject to such an extent that they're able to do seminal research on it. The thing they're now being taught is how to do research, not the subject, since they already know enough about the subject that they're able to invent new parts of the subject.
Unsurprisingly, people who know so much about a subject that they're inventing a new part of it are generally trusted to teach other people about the basics of that subject.
Taxing people who don't have money isn't the same as taxing those who have loads of it and don't benefit society to the same extent.
""No money from the tuition waivers actually ends up in our pockets" (so it shouldn't be taxed).
Pretty sure if you get something of commercial value, it should be taxed.
If I give you a trip to Tahiti, that's not something in your POCKET, but most certainly it's taxable, particularly if it's compensatory.
Sounds like people are sad that loopholes are being closed.
-Styopa
The problem is if the vast majority of your income is in-kind, and then most of the rest of your money is going ot food/shelter, where do they get the cash to pay the government?
Maybe they should be allowed to defer their payments on tuition until they make a higher (cash) income?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
forces you live in their house for free to work there is more like what is going on and the list cost of that free room is just as much or more then your pay rate.
The list cost needs to come down to be in line with the pay or it's like the old company store days.
And this becomes a non-issue.
-jcr
That's a good idea. "Income" is hard to pin down, and it's too easy for people of means to game the system.
For fairness, it would be preferable to replace it with a highly progressive excise tax on each citizen's total wealth, without regard to where on the planet such wealth is being hoarded. In particular, most of these graduate students wouldn't have to worry about a significant tax burden.
Tax breaks are functionally government funding, aren't they?
No. Especially in cases like this, where the people in question don't pay any income tax anyway. But any time there's a reduction in a tax that someone has to pay, it's not "government funding that person." It's "taking less away from that person." If someone else has to now pay higher taxes, then it's not government funding, it's "that other guy now paying higher taxes funding." For example, nearly half the people in the country pay ZERO income taxes. A small percentage of the people in the country pay almost all the income taxes. When you decide to pay a university staffer (a "graduate student") with fake money so they can avoid paying taxes on their income, you're just asking someone else - maybe, a landscaper in Pennsylvania, or a woman in Florida who's struggling to grow her restaurant business, to pay it for them. In practice, it's highly paid professionals who actually pick up the tab for most everyone else. The "government" never does.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
LOL, Property rights! You MORON. If you have a RIGHT to property, you outright own it. If you have a TITLE to property, e.g. a car or real estate, you never own it and are forced to pay taxes on it. If you don't pay the taxes, you lose it or are penalized with more fines or jail time.
Learn the difference, retard!
Start with the military, move on to law enforcement (imprisoning 1% of the US population is expensive as well as immoral), then we'll have enough for social programs left over :)
Then let's do what many civilized countries do, and allow tuition to be deductible. Then it's a wash.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
This might be a strained analogy but here goes. Instead of charging $50,000 and giving a $50,000 waiver for which they will be taxed, why not charge a tuition of $1 and give a $1 waiver. They can pay the extra 25 cent tax on the dollar and call it a day. What is the benefit to the school of charging $50K if they are going to waive it?
Biomedical researchers, research physicians, physicists, space scientists, engineers, environmental scientists, geneticists, and astronomers. Not everything comes out of Corporate America (tm), especially not basic science.
Maybe the homegrown ones wouldn't be flipping burgers for a living if we didn't. But hey, it's more fun to look down on them because you're angry they went to grad school than it is to address the problem. Nothing like getting the working class to fight among themselves to keep those profits maximized.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But it works out so very nicely for politicians who depend on keeping voters ignorant to continue getting themselves elected.
They've been employing this strategy since the days of the Reagan Administration.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Technically speaking the title regarding ongoing taxation is a license to use the car on public roads. Doesn't apply to a private vehicle never used on public thoroughfares.
1. Since it actually increases yearly taxes on almost all graduate student, usually at or near zero, the tax plan is not universal tax reduction or a rate cut.
2. The tuition waiver at most should only apply to credited lecture or student instruction hours, not supervised lab and research hours
3. The tuition waiver should be assessed at value or cost basis, not nominal, hyperinflated tuition values, even if super rich kids do pay that muchundiscounted. e.g. instead of Ivy rates over $1000 per credit hour, some national rate or actual labor cost basis should apply, say capped at $100-$200 per hour.
Otherwise increased taxation is greatly adding insult to injury on this already f*ked up education system's exploitation of parents and students that actually work.
It there still a separate tax-free treatment of scholarships (gifts)?
Why, it's almost as if universities want to keep their graduate students they will have to either...wait for it... reduce tuition or increase compensation.
That's OK. Other countries will pick up the slack that your fellow travelers in Washington are dropping.
America had a good run... a violent revolution against difficult odds, an Industrial Revolution that never really ended, and two world wars that left us better off than everyone else on the planet.
But all empires fall sooner or later, like dead trees in a forest that become food for the ecosystem. Our number is up. We're done. Next...
Here tuition is tax deductible, scholarships and grants are tax exempt and most if not all of your TA pay counts as a scholarship.
Landscaper in PA is a terrible example.
I loved in PA, landscapers only take cash, and I promise you it's not taxed.
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Taxing people who don't have money isn't the same as taxing those who have loads of it and don't benefit society to the same extent.
ZOMG. Plus infinity Insightful.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
^lived
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
A lot of the university "goods" are intangibles at fake, overhyped suggested retail prices, instead of the actual, highly discounted prices that most students pay after "scholarships" or other aid. Some sort of national cap price should apply. Or simply wait for the market to re-arrange the student choices of preferred "good" schools' tuition policies.
Most universities are greatly overpriced and featherbedded, IMHO.
This isn't a Trump thing, this is a congress thing, i.e. a bunch of #nevertrump traitor RINOs trying to fuck things up. The senate version is better.
To the extent that tuition waivers are granted in exchange for work by the recipient, they should be considered taxable income. In current practice, the waivers are little more than a tax dodge.
If nothing changes except the tax status of waivers, then yes, grad students will get screwed. But the change (if it happens) will not occur in a vacuum.
"Full price" tuition is like sticker price on a car or the asking price on a house. Hardly anyone pays full price. Every year, tuition rises by some ridiculous amount, with a corresponding increase in the average amount of "financial aid" for each student. When someone like George W. Bush applies to Yale or Harvard with more money than brains, they find room for him somehow -- at full price of course.
If universities had to charge the same price to every student in an identical program, and students had to think twice before signing up for vast amounts of debt, the free market would balance at some point lower than current prices.
Thanks largely to government "help", far too much money has been pumped into higher education. University spending (public and private) continues to grow in the absence of any restraint. Students can always borrow more money next year because the government will borrow more money to lend. As a result, tuition rises faster than inflation every year, but the quality of the finished product is pretty much the same.
We have a similar problem with health care. For many years, employees sought better and better health care insurance, because employers paid most of the cost and employees received the benefit tax-free. As taxes and health care costs both grew without restraint, the value of employer-provided health care increased as well, fueling a vicious cycle. Every year, the cost of health care increases far beyond the rate of inflation because insured people are effectively discouraged (if not blocked altogether) from price shopping for their insurance or health care services.
Before Congressional Democrats butchered it, early drafts of the Affordable Care Act tried to encourage more competition for both insurance and health care services. By the time the law was finalized, lobbyists "fixed" it, preserving the sacred status of health insurers, health care providers, and big pharma. To this day, vast amounts of government "help" accomplish little more than inflating the health care bubble and taking care of lobbyists.
In some ways, taxing tuition waivers and student loan interest can be considered the Obamacare of higher education. If the tax dodges go away and loan interest is taxed as well, maybe it's time for students to set a limit on the amount they are willing to pay for tuition. Rest assured, universities will not allow their seats to remain empty. If supply and demand forces them to lower their operating cost to survive in a price sensitive environment, so be it.
Students should be outraged at the prospect of paying high tuition, borrowing money at high interest rates, and paying high taxes on top of it all. I understand their anger. But asking government to keep inflating the bubble is a big mistake and not sustainable. Such "help" will only make things worse.
I've worked out a deal with Tesla, wherein I will work in the Tesla plant assembling cars for 9 months, in exchange for a brand new, $100K Tesla automobile... Should I pay taxes on that $100K Tesla?
That's exactly what universities are doing with graduate students, but somehow their graduate school tuition is tax-exempt.
Are the two really that different?
The issue isn't the value of the waived tuition, it's the low compensation the schools pay the graduate students.
Ken
If rich people are so great, why can't I download a pizza for free? How come some Harvard educated supergenius hasn't invented a blockchain to generate free food? Instead we have Facebook. Zuck that! I can't eat a Facebook.
However, when the university receives $50k in tuition, it pays tax on that revenue to the government.
No, they don't - colleges and universities are, almost exclusively non-profit, tax-exempt organizations. The federal gov't is trying very hard to shut down tax-paying private for-profit universities.
Ken
I charge a million dollars for my service of replying to slashdot posts, but I'm waiting your fee for that today. Congrats, you now owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes to the feds.
Since when is declining to make someone pay for a service the same as giving them income?
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It's a lot cheaper for those in charge to bring in university graduates than to educate them here. Isn't this tax bill a disincentive?
Inheritance is income... it now won't be taxed. The heirs receive a huge windfall AND the assets in Estates have their base stepped up - completely dodging capital gains tax. But lowly Grad Student will be taxed on something they never see and pay taxes in the realm of 30% on a poverty level income.
If this doesn't piss you off you are not paying attention.
America does not need to produce graduate students. The companies can just hire H-1B and L-1 workers. They will work cheaper also.
How can an American student financially compete with tech workers that pay $8000 for a graduate degree.While a US graduate has $80000 is student loan?
Joke's on you, I'm dumber you can imagine.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Reminds me of an Edward Abbey quote: The new conservatives are neither new nor conservative - but as old as Babylon and Evil as Hell.
Ignore the small-souled bean counters who are entirely convinced you will never wind up making a contribution to a cure for cancer, or the first workable fusion reactor, or add a small piece of the puzzle to the problems of aging or perhaps limb regeneration.
These are conservatives. They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. As far as they're concerned, you aren't an investment. You're nothing but an up-scale counter clerk, worth not one cent more than the hours you worked yesterday.
Come on up to Canada, or maybe move to the EU. The US is already falling behind in cutting edge research. The so-called "god particle" was discovered at CERN because these bean-counting half wits yanked funding from the planned US particle accelerator that would have relegated CERN's large hadron collider to the dustbin. And China has just built a hyper-sonic wind tunnel that blows the doors off anything in the US.
Even if the current crop of envious, anti-intellectual cretins is swept from power, the damage they have already done will take a decade to fix, maybe longer. If you want to win a Nobel Prize some day, you would do better to come to a country where "research" isn't defined as "can you write software to cut a millisecond off e-trades and make Goldman Sachs even richer".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Are you fucking high? You must never have been a grad student.
Nowadays, grad students mainly get their tuition waivers by being either teacher's assistants or research assistants and in both cases they're basically working their asses off for minimum wage. I know this because I just came from a meeting of TA's and they're teaching the classes, grading the papers and homework and entering all the grades. They are busting their butts for the measly tuition waivers.
Remember, what's happening here is that the GOP will be taxing people making less than 30k per year so they can afford to give their corporate donors a fat tax break.
And you're going to pay far more taxes under this new bill. Medical expenses will no longer be deductible (and more people will have medical expenses because 13 million people will lose health care the first year). Your local and state taxes will no longer be deductible (and if you live in parts of the country where people wear shoes and have access to dental care, that will mean a huge bite out of your bottom line). You don't have a clue about how fucked you are under the new bill. You've played yourself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have a bridge to sell you, and some fine land in Florida.
Seriously, they really have conned you, haven't they?
These populists are blowhards who are supported by ultra-wealthy interests, who pander to the worst instincts of low information voters. People who want to impose their own will on others in many aspects of life. People who think that they alone have the framework for a moral life, rejecting any competing ideas.
Just look at the tax plan: promoted by the biggest populist of them all: Donald Trump. It's a huge bung to ultra-wealthy, a minor tax cut for a few middle-class people, and a tax increase for many other middle class people.
Well, there are two problems with that.
1. Even if some of the accusations are fraudulent (and none have been proven to be so), others remain. Moore didn't even deny all the allegations.
2. McConnell is also the enemy. You support the Republicans despite their policies being aimed to impoverish ordinary people and put your faith in people who are even more right-wing, even more determined to impoverish ordinary people.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yeah, compare that Bernie guy to Bush Junior, whose "real world" life experience apparently amounted to lying drunk in a ditch while his classmates went on to serve their country in combat.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Grad students don't get tuition waivers "given" to them. They earn them as RA's and TA's and work their asses off.
This is a tax hike on people making minimum wage. The GOP congress might give Donald Trump a win, but they will be ground to dust over this tax bill. It's even less popular than their disastrous "Repeal and Replace" that went down in flames so spectacularly earlier this year.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The difference in this case is that they are working at below-market rates to get that waiver, so in some sense it really is part of their income. But the biggest problem with taxing it is determining the fair value of the waiver because tuition is often discounted for other reasons.
I donâ(TM)t think it should be taxed, but there is a sane argument for doing so.
US tax code is about 72,000 pages... its complication upon complication. And not helping the situation is that "income" is a complex concept that is very hard to describe. Its similar to profits in that it is implied to be a remainder. Some gain minus some loss... leaving an income. And what counts for gain or loss is arbitrary.
Making it worse, what is and is not a gain or loss changes depending on context, how much money you're making... and a whole series of other issues that have given rise to all kinds of professionals that do little more than navigate the tax and regulation code.
It won't be simplified because the only compromise we have at this point is to make it so complicated that smart people can get what they want and dumb people get screwed.
That is the current compromise.
A better one in my opinion would be to simplify the code and offer a tax rate we can all generally agree is reasonable.
Sadly what happens when we simplify is that people start rubbing their hands together to jack taxes up now that the system is too simple to evade. Thus loopholes spring into form immediately... and we're back to complexity. Leaving the tax happy people nailing stupid people and the smart people skipping out on the whole thing.
There is no better solution. Literally what we're doing now is as good as its going to get. The tax happy people won't stop being silly... so make it complicated and at least the smart people can evade it.
Its sad... but all other attempts at compromise have failed.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Republicans... doing everything they can to destroy the future of the United States.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
People are trying to argue that all income should be taxed.
Estate Tax is being repealed in this very same GOP plan. How can anyone argue that inheritance isn't income? And the assets in an inheritance (property, stocks, bonds) have their basis (original cost) magically stepped up to present value and thereby dodging the normal Capital Gains tax.
It appears the Republicans favor old money, the idle rich and trust fund babies than they do scientists, doctors, educators, engineers - you know the people that actually make American Great.
The "populists" are the ones who are making sure those middle and working class people can still get a tax write-off for their private planes, and will now be able to bring back "trophies" when they go on their African safaris.
The "populists" are the ones laundering Russian drug money through their real estate deals. The "populists" are the ones trying to get $15,000,000.00 to kidnap and deliver a foreign national to a corrupt Turkish dictator. The "populists" are the ones who have been shown in the Paradise Papers to be involved in deals with Russian oligarchs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Clearly, they're concerned about the well-being of the common American.
Because Moore is a pedophile. He diddled little girls to show what a staunch "populist" his is.
Actually, McConnell immediately started a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into Franken. The same kind that got Bob Packwood tossed out of Congress not long ago.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Perhaps the universities, which are in many cases hoarding billions of dollars of tax-free endowment money
Ever wonder why America is great? Or why we have some of the best graduate schools? You seem to advocate we eat our seed corn?
Might makes right?
Yep. Whether you agree with it or not, that is nature.
It's well established that if an employer gives you something, cash or cars or houses or artwork or stock, in exchange for your labor it's generally taxable income.
Yes, there are some twisted loopholes (such as health insurance premiums being paid by the employer generally not being taxable to the employee and some arbitrary level of life insurance premiums not being taxable to the employee), but those are loopholes that should be eliminated just as this tuition waiver loophole should be eliminated.
While it would be nice to eliminate all loopholes at once, that's politically infeasible, so eliminating them one-by-one is probably the best we can do. Just as loopholes creep in one-by--one, they need to be eliminated one-by-one.
Perhaps eliminating this loophole will also help reduce the fantasy level of "tuition" that has arisen in American higher education (perhaps second only to the fantasy levels of "chargemaster" rates in the healthcare industry). If so, this will save billions of dollars a year and make educational institutions actually consider market economics in their pricing decisions.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
MIT's current endowment is $14.8 billion. They can afford it.
http://news.mit.edu/2017/endow...
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
If they are going to tax the tuition waiver, set graduate tuition at $1 and let the student pay $0.20 or whatever to the IRS.
Universities don't want to do this, of course, because it's a way of siphoning money from research grants into the general fund. Which is kind of hilarious (at least it was to me when I was a grad student) because the university already takes 'overhead' that is meant to cover mundane things infrastructure, grounds, offices, keeping the lights on. And it's not a small take, most overhead is calculated at 50% or so of the grant (that is, if the grant is $100K to do research, the NIH will kick in another $50K to the university, 1/3rd being overhead).
So even after taking overhead, the university then wants to take the grant money and use it to pay itself a tuition waiver.
A few notes before someone actually believes I'm a right wing troll: I think we should be increasing funding on research, I think we should better support grad students. Universities do provide a needed structure for all this, but are woefully inefficient and mismanaged, which in the end means less money for actual research and teaching. To be against this is not to be against the university, it's to be for the university's ultimate mission.
The easy fix for this is for the universities to stop charging tuition to people who are actually employees.
For the universities, the tuition does not go to cover research costs, overhead, or teaching costs, it's just an extra fee they charge to launder a bit of money from research to the general fund.
If you do the math on this, a company is allowed to charge a 7% fee on grants, while universities charge tuition instead. $150k grant/contract covers a project employing one fully burdened researcher (grad student or non-PhD industry scientist). On that grant, the company would take $10,500 of profit and the university takes $50,000. If the scientist employed happens to be on a visa, the difference is even more extreme ... because... tradition? I've never tried to claim extra legal costs for employing international scientists on my industry grant proposals, maybe I'm missing out.
Just to be super clear what a rip-off this is for grad researchers, that difference in fee vs tuition is just about the difference in salaries for those two positions. This is one of those rare cases where extra money in the corporate budget goes to the employee.
In any case, if you're a grad student facing this new tax, ask your university regents or trustees why they're charging you tuition at all. You can skip your PI, they're already on board with getting rid of tuition.
I don't get it, perhaps because I'm British, but this sounds like a scam to me.
"My peers and I work between 40 and 80 hours a week as classroom teachers and laboratory researchers, and in return, our universities provide us with a tuition waiver for school."
In England, that would make you an employee of the university, not a "student". If you are working (picking a mid point) 60 hours a week, that's 12 hours a day (5 day week) or about 8.5 hours a day (7 day week). On the first it is impossible to study anything else if you eat and sleep, and on the second it could be a part time course at best.
Here's what is sounds like. The University charges for "tuition" that they aren't actually getting , and this charge is subsidised by the government, so its effectively a handout to the University of $50k p.a. to each researcher.
For a very long time now - ever since the end of company scrip payment. The practice was banned because it could be used for tax avoision: Pay your workers a taxable pittance, but then give them a massive discount at the store and company-provided housing.
The 'populists' are useful idiots. All that is required to win their support is to wave the flag a lot, talk about how great America is and blame every problem upon immigrants and foreigners.
Moore did not win because he was standing up for the people: He won because he isn't ashamed to tell the people that Christians are the best, nonbelievers are all America-hating commie filth, and that homosexuals are plotting to rape their children. It's Alabama, that sort of thing goes down well there.
I'm not the one who's been fooled into thinking that making an education as economically unfeasible as possible is something to gloat about.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Ignorance knows no political boundaries.
But now that you mention it--*one* US political party has gone out of its way for a generation or more to keep you ignorant *and* to encourage you to feel smug about it. Which one do you think that might be?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That is what the US needs to correct the existing power imbalance. People are the most important resource, and actions against people must have consequences in law or beyond it when corruption prevents equity from being achieved through the courts. That is the foundation of civilization itself and failing it starts the nose dive for death of any empire or nation.
Republicans, in their current composition, don't like education, don't like people who aren't millionares, and don't like people to be upwardly mobile. We got it.
So, that's one less avenue to university education. The remaining ones are: (a) be frightfully good and get a full scholarship, (b) have rich parents, (c) join the army and try to qualify for a paid-for education.
Everyone else leave for Canada, the UK, or Europe. Don't worry, we'll make good the shortfall with Indians, Chinese, and Europeans in the software and engineering R&D jobs and PhD. classes.
You could reduce income tax and have a federal sales tax like VAT in the UK/EU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
This would be a disaster for U.S. STEM Ph.D. education.
No, it already is. Maybe this will flush these students out of the programs and universities will start having to actually fucking PAY their """students""" for the 90+ hour workweeks, under shitty advisory, that they're expected to work. STEM Phd education in this country isn't education...it's taking our best and brightest, and hazing them into depression and suicide with next to zero compensation.
That is exactly what America needs. We need to drive out or discourage anyone capable of creating progress in society. That explains why the House and Senate are the way they are. Those guys get big bucks in exchange for either doing nothing at all or doing exactly what America does not need. Maybe if we are really lucky everyone involved in advanced science or technology will go work for Russia or Turkey or Saudi Arabia. That way they will have all the tools required to put America out of our misery. So what chunk of this pie goes to trump?
Nowhere it is written that thou shalt research. We all know that the earth is around 6000 years old. A few also know that the earth is flat.
Welcome back to the dark ages!
Looking at the Alabama special election is really interesting right now. In the primaries, Judge Roy Moore was a populist and avid Trump fan who went against the establishment favorite Luthor Strange. Strange outspent Moore by a wide margin... and lost.
The vote was more against Strange than for Moore. Strange was the AD of Alabama who made a deal with the Governor he was investigating to pull back or out of the investigation so he could be appointed interim Senator. People rightfully were really really made at the blatant corruption. Moore was just there to benefit.
Your tax dollars help to support common resources, such as police and firefighters. Tax money helps to ensure the roads you travel on are safe and well-maintained. Taxes fund public libraries and parks.
* Sadly with the rich changing governmental rules, getting tax support for their pet businesses projects, donations to political campaigns with pay-to-play arrangements with PACs, and support for gerrymandering, and with examples of failing common resources (roads crumbling and bridges collapsing)... it is becoming more like taxation without representation for most Americans.
But is it? Like other comments here, the rest of us have the living daylights taxed out of EVERYTHING we do, every penny we make. Why shouldn't they? After all, they don't ALL become Nobel Prize winning scientists who cure cancer or discover the secrets of the Universe. That is the fairness and logic of it. However, I don't believe it should be done. We MUST have a steady stream of scientists to fuel our obsessive need to know EVERYTHING and to know it NOW. And the effect of this is that we will destroy the few Americans who manage to get PhDs relative to the rest of the world, causing the importation of more and more foreign scientist H1B workers. I'm of two minds on this. It may just be an example of self destructive fairness. Or tax greed.
E Proelio Veritas.
Can schools restructure tuition so it's zero for students they now waive it for?
Then, instead of waiving tuition, they don't charge some students. Now, no waiver to tax.
Firstly, "avoison?" Evasion is a word. Avoidance is a word. "Avoison:" not a word.
Secondly, company scrip was used to soak workers by tying them to company stores with vastly overinflated prices for necessities. I don't know what fantasy land you are living in where company stores ever gave massive discounts.
Also, since the vast majority of payroll taxes are on income (i.e. the responsibility of the worker, not the employer), an employer would need to be incredibly benevolent toward its workers to take on massive criminal liability in order to spare them the additional tax burden. If you think that was the case, you don't know much about American corporate history.
It's not robbing rich people. Maintaining a civilization costs money, someone has to pay for it. Rich people have benefited the most from it, so why shouldn't they pay more?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It must have taken you, what, an hour to compose your thoughts on that? I do see your point, though. Your refutation of reality sure is illuminating. I especially like your discussion of tax brackets, who pays them, and why you think that someone living in a state with lower local tax rates isn't getting screwed by those in another state who are writing off their higher local taxes on the federally taxed income. You've sure made a great case, thanks. Now, isn't it past your bedtime?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"My peers and I work between 40 and 80 hours a week as classroom teachers and laboratory researchers, and in return, our universities provide us with a tuition waiver for school. For M.I.T. students, this waiver keeps us from having to pay a tuition bill of about $50,000 every year -- a staggering amount, but one that is similar to the fees at many other colleges and universities," he writes. "No money from the tuition waivers actually ends up in our pockets, so under Section 117(d)(5), it isn't counted as taxable income." Rousseau continues by saying his tuition waivers will be taxed under the House's tax bill.
Yet, at the end of a few years they end up with something others have spent a quarter-million dollars to buy, a graduate degree from MIT, which has value (otherwise why would graduate students take on the work?).
Ken
>BEEN through grad school (summa cum laude) AND started multiple successful business ventures and can say unequivocally
So you think you're the smartest person in the world? You think your own experiences are representative of the entire world? If so, you're more child-minded than suggested by #55574889.
Want a few facts? Look up the countries with:
* highest tax rates
* longest life expectancy
* least government corruption
Now do the same at the other end of spectrum of taxes, life expectancy and corruption. Notice a pattern? Yup, use your (*snicker*) graduate degree to figure that one out. You want total freedom? Libertarianism isn't merely relief from government oppression, it's an opportunity for private entities to amass power to oppress you even more.
While it's true that a large entity (government) can't perfectly balance regulations but if regulations are holding you back then you're doing something wrong: either you're trying to do something evil, or you're not competent enough to make a useful product without dumping your waste in someone else's back yard.
Libertarians can't see past the ends of their own noses.
Actually, now that employee discounts are considered a taxable benefit here
First they are not - it was proposed to tax employee discounts and then shot down. Secondly, even if that were the case it would have no effect. Grants and scholarships are specifically tax exempt and there is absolutely no tuition remission: we pay our TAs (which usually counts as a scholarship) and they pay the tuition out of their salary. So there is no discount to tax.
No, America is going to collapse because too many of you think this is an adequate riposte to the OP. Whether the result of ideology, stupidity or some toxic mix, this impoverished thinking is what will do for you.
Grad students don't get tuition waivers "given" to them. They earn them as RA's and TA's and work their asses off.
And they get a $50,000 benefit that other students pay $50,000 for - a years tuition at a graduate school like MIT.
This is a tax hike on people making minimum wage.
Uhm, no. Minimum wage is $7.45/hr (give or take), and once you factor in the value of their tuition waver, $50,000, in order for graduate students to be considered working at the minimum wage would have them doing 6,711 hours/year ($50K/$7.45), heck, if they were paid the so-called living wage of $15/hr that would still have them toiling away 3,333 hours/year. Are you claiming that grad students work 60-120 hours/week?
Grad Students want to pretend their tuition has no value, until they enter the workplace after graduation - this proposed change eliminates that fantasy.
Imagine an engineer at Tesla receives a low salary (stipend), but after 12 months of service gets a new $100K Tesla, and will continue to get an additional $100K Tesla for each additional year they remain at Tesla - doesn't the engineer owe taxes on the "free" Tesla? Why shouldn't the grad student who gets a "free" year of grad school ($50K tuition) owe taxes on that form of compensation?
The answer is that Universities, with their huge endowments, have given away "free" tuition in exchange for the grad student's labor - grad students should be paid a wage that covers their tuition expense, then the tax issue takes care of itself.
Ken
You could. If you wanted to create a wildly unfair taxation system, you could introduce VAT and abolish other taxes. Then poor people would face a massive hike in the costs of things they have to buy to survive, while really rich people saw their taxes plummet.
Well it's more likely to be a millionaire's brat. Oh wait, they fixed that. Good thing too, we wouldn't want to disincentivise people from choosing the right parents.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Fungible does not mean what you think it does
You're right. Thanks for pointing that out.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
health insurance is only part of the issue we had pre existing conditions and sick people being dropped
Because few students pay the sticker price anyway, I suspect that instead of a $50k sticker prices and $50k waivers, we'll see $1k sticker prices and $1k waivers. What's to stop graduate students from paying cash? I don't know, the schools will think of something. (E,g, grading papers is part of your education. Also, wax on, wax off.)
-Dave
Since when is declining to make someone pay for a service the same as giving them income?
Except grad students provide skilled labor in exchange for their tuition, labor that has value in the market place.
If Oprah gives you a car, you owe taxes on the car.
If your employer gives you a shoe box full of $20 bills, you owe taxes on the shoebox full of $20s.
If your employer gives you a car (to keep, take title on and own), you owe taxes on the car.
If your employer is a university, and that university gives you a year's tuition in exchange for you teaching a few classes/semester, you owe taxes on the waived tuition.
You do understand that grad students sign a contract accepting the free tuition as compensation for their labor, it isn't a unilateral agreement imposed on grad students arbitrarily by the university - it is sought out and coveted by the grad students who willingly agree to the terms of the contract.
Ken
there's a really fucked up financial incentive for them in pretending that college tuition actually costs $40,000 per year.
And still, every year thousands upon thousands of college students go deeper and deeper into debt to cover that $40K tuition bill that grad students get for free. If any other employer handed low-paid employees something worth $40K every year, they low-paid employee would be expected to pay taxes on that thing, why are grad students exempt?
Ken
I guess you missed the part where the Republicans are also going to take away the deduction for interest on student loans.
If you're prevented from paying your own way, then you can get a graduate degree if and only if youre parents are already well-to do, and can pay an inflated tuition and support you as well.
This mat be an intentional change: in Ontario a former permier got his degrees using provincial grants and loans, and when elected, promptly cut them so other people's children couldn't compete with his.
davecb@spamcop.net
Along with my tuition waiver as a grad student (at the Great Rival of MIT) I also enjoyed student housing for a rather symbolic amount, obviously an emolument that should also have been taxed. WTF get rid of us damn freeloaders.
Not really. People could scan a QR code on their receipts into a app into their smart phone. Then at the end of the year they'd submit a list of receipts and get refunded the VAT they paid on a tiered scale - so up to the first band they'd get 100% refund on vat, tailing off to 0% refund on the top band. The bands would be cunningly arranged so that poor people paid small amounts of VAT and rich people paid more.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Graduate students are generally lazy and entitled
Are you fucking high? You must never have been a grad student.
They seem me trollin' the slashdot....
We'll make great pets
For decades the skills and liars in government, media, and banking have perpetuated the myth that everyone should go to college. Tens of millions of Americans were promised that their degree would lead to a good job.
It was all a pack of lies (to quote the great Phil Collins). College is largely a scam. It serves mostly as an indoctrination center to keep people have thinking critically, and while wasting four years and gobs of money, most graduates walk away with no useful skills.
"largely a scam".... Bogus generalization and demonstrably false.
As a developer, I have worked with many people who went to college, many who did not. Those who attended a good program of study were consistently better prepared for the work. More disciplined, better informed, more confident, better prepared to keep up with the changes to the intellectual environment required to make proper contribution to our products. That has been true in every organization I have worked in from Cable TV through avionics, logistics automation, communication, industrial data acquisition and control. Co-workers with the discipline to get a proper grounding in the theory consistently hit the ground running and are more productive, more flexible, and arrive with a better toolkit for delivering results.
There have been exceptional workers who are just plain brilliant and have learned on the job, and there have been those who managed to get through the course of study while avoiding the getting education part of it, but those are exceptions not the general rule.
On the original subject: Taxing people who managed to get into and be successful in advanced grad programs for the tuition that they would be paying if not for doing the work of teaching or research is a perfect example of short term thinking. It shows a complete failure to understand where improvements in productivity that produce true economic growth come from.
Grad students don't get tuition waivers "given" to them. They earn them
..which is why they're being asked to pay tax on their earnings.
This is a tax hike on people making minimum wage.
$80k is minimum wage? You just said yourself they're earning that..
The House tax bill also sets the capital gains tax rate on inherited property to 0%. No taxes ever for the wealthiest families. Not double taxation. Not single taxation. Zero taxation. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
No, they work for that tuition waiver.
Have you ever been anywhere near an institution of higher learning?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Correct, but it's still happening at universities, not at their own facilities.
Normally I'd think that neither leftists nor rightists want to discourage people from pursuing graduate degrees. Now I'm not so sure. If only the rich can afford to go to school, then only the rich will profit from the rewards of education. Is this what Rs want?
It doesn't seem to make sense -- one would think that uneducated people cost the system more money than they return. But the more I look at our education system, the more I think that it is indeed the case that the rich want to keep the poor and middle class from getting an education.
This tax bill includes a removal of the ability of teachers to deduct a few hundred bucks spent on school supplies for their work. Talk about going out of your way to make things hard for little gain. Seems crazy to suffer the political penalty for doing this unless they really believe that publicly available education should work poorly.
Instead of calling it a tuition waiver call it a scholarship. Let the professor who is getting the TA award it on a semester or quarterly basis. Pay the tA the stipend as well for the work.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Enlighten us, ac.
Exactly.... it is obvious that the GOP favors Old Money and Trust Fund Babies and shits on the next generation scientists and engineers and educators.
After the war on drugs and the war on terror comes the war on science. Congratulations.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
"This means that M.I.T. graduate students would be responsible for paying taxes on an $80,000 annual salary, when we actually earn $33,000 a year. That's an increase of our tax burden by at least $10,000 annually."
Take your education to Europe, where intellectualism isn't dead. Watch the rest of the brain-drain from afar.
Thank you! You finally came up with the solution to getting millenials out of their parents' homes! Having to pay the income tax for the "income" of free room and board is the straw that will break the camel's back!
If it's a problem, just don't pay the fucking tax and keep doing what you're doing. Don't commit suicide or shoot yourself in the foot because the media tells you there's no hope.
In REALITY, the world these psychotic media-cycle-consuming drones are divorced from, the SCHOOLS will have to pay....obviously it's in their interest to have graduate students....obviously they aren't going to let the entirety of their research operations be scuttled....
This seems to be a move to attack the endowments of these educational institutions, if indeed it has an intent.
Backlash against the neocon think tanks? I'm for it.
Normally I'd ignore it, but somebody modded it up.
Normally I'd ignore it, but SHINY BAIT YUMMY YUMMY SHINY YUMYUMS
Anyway, dumbass, the schools will just have to pay their grad students more if they want to keep them. Not so complicated.
In truth it is merely a huge tax break for the wealthy.
Which is good for this economy. That's what this economy is.
This economy is not 'your' economy and it never really was.
You always say a bunch of crazy shit with no references or evidence.
You always get modded up.
You are a fucking paid shill and this moderation system is completely corrupt and broken.
Tell you what: since you're brand new to Slashdot and you clearly don't know who I am, I'll help you out this one time. You pick any of the things I said in the above post that you consider "crazy shit with no references or evidence" and I will provide the references.
Deal?
You are welcome on my lawn.
But throughout the year they have to pay ridiculously high prices? What if they forget to scan something? Your idea would be "better if the VAT was dynamically calculated at the time of purchase, but that is another can of worms...
I don't understand your comment. In both cases, the graduate student and apprentice are being paid under market rate because of the education they are receiving. Today neither of them are taxes on the value of that free education. What makes you think either are being treated differently today?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
If we accept that a child is a child from the ages of birth through puberty, then a 14 year old is most certainly a child because they haven't completed puberty. Here is the definition of pedophilia:
You are welcome on my lawn.
Alternatively the large business (university) could just stop overcharging for tuition. If they charged reasonable rates, then the taxes would be very low.
Looking at the Alabama special election is really interesting right now. In the primaries, Judge Roy Moore was a populist and avid Trump fan who went against the establishment favorite Luthor Strange. Strange outspent Moore by a wide margin... and lost. Now we see the senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, would rather see a democrat win than have Moore elected(*).
You would rather elect a self-confessed child molester than a Democrat? What the fuck is wrong with you? He did confess to it - he said he never dated any young girls without their mother's permission. On the Sean Hannity show!
(*) It boils down to whether an *accusation* of impropriety is enough to knock a candidate out of an election. You can easily see how this might be abused, and indeed in Moore's case it certainly seems like the accusations are specious.
NINE women have come forth now. Most of them are Republican voters and voted for Trump. And you claim they are specious. So much evidence have been brought forth and you just blindly ignore it all. I'm not surprised you are a Republic voter and just ignores evidence.
Because the states that do pay state taxes are underwriting your lavish hillbilly lifestyle.
And by the way, my mortgage is paid off. So why the fuck should I be covering the shortfall so you can write off your mortgage interest? Why the fuck should you be paying the taxes on the Trump family's private planes? Why should you be covering their carried interest for them?
You're so concerned about my taxes that you're ignoring the three-foot pole being inserted into your ass by the Grand Ol' Pedophile party.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You may have a point IF you were charging others 1m per reply, or indeed, charging folks anything at all.
These students are exchanging their service for an education. Absent the work, they'd have to pay their own tuition. In fact, plenty of other students DO have to pay the tuition.
I don't see how you can view this as anything OTHER than income.
Which is not to say I'm on board with taxing it. There may ( or may not ) be good reasons to keep the income tax free. However, to pretend it's not income distorts the discussion and compromises it's integrity.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Except they do.
So, someone whose income tax rat is 0% (actually a NEGATIVE number because they get "refunds" on taxes they don't even pay), is paying income tax? Why listen to anything else you're saying when you lead with a lie like that?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
College students, who want to be members of the ruling class, are going to end up making good incomes, otherwise what's the point of college? College students who're committed socialists hate people who make good incomes. So, they should welcome this opportunity to begin to pay back that income to which they are not entitled for the benefit of the increased government services they celebrate. Long live equality of outcomes!
Already happens, and VAT is still regressive
Income and wealth tax are fair taxes. Acknowledging that, and making them work well, is a much better use of time.
Don't forget about the part where lower personal income tax rates are temporary, and will expire in 10 years - but the corporate tax cut is permanent.
So, eventually, it's going to screw all working class Americans.
/. has an unfortunate infestation of tax dependents and other degenerates. Naturally, they downvote anyone advocating an end to the looting.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A blindingly simple solution.
So your idea is that because you act civilized (not robbing and killing people I guess), you deserve someone else's money?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
It sure does. That is the fundamental law of nature. The way we get around it is to pool our resources and votes to create an entity that is mightiest of all, and (if we don't let the cheating bastards get away with corrupting our process) responsive to the will of the people it represents. That might, and that might alone, is what allows us to overlay our values of what is right an wrong.
Cooperation isn't about reduction of might. Just the opposite: it's about increasing might by harnessing the combined might of those involved. Daesh isn't mighty by any stretch when compared to the collective might displayed by any number of nations around the world.
That is why big, massive corporations always ... donate tons of money to mainline liberalism and conservatism.
They donate to Democrats and Republicans. Neither is liberal or conservative. The former are centrists, and the latter are the radical right wing. And they donate to these parties rather than the libertarians not because they don't prefer libertarian ideology, but rather because the libertarians have no power. In their view, it's easier to shift a D or R (and let's be honest: it's mostly Rs) to their position than it is to boost a marginal party to a position of power.
You are so far off base, I don't even know how to answer. No one 'deserves' anything. At some point we decided that it would be a good thing if society had roads and a way to distribute clean drinking water, among thousands of other things. Even someone living in the middle of nowhere and off the grid benefits from living under law enforcement. This all costs money. Everyone has a right to have everyone else paying their personal fair share towards it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yeah, except we aren't talking about taxes to pay for roads, drinking water, and law enforcement (mostly funded at the local level). We are talking about taxes to pay for social programs, military beyond any amount of reason, paying off a ridiculous debt, and a whole bunch of wasteful pork. The federal tax and spend system is a jobs and wealth redistribution program.
I'm all for paying for the important stuff in our society but we are well beyond that.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Well then the choice is yours to make a meaningful contribution to government and change where the money goes. Avoiding taxes just screws everyone over.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This seems to be a math-order problem.
$100 income - 30% taxes = $70 spendable money + $30k taxes
$50 tuition = $20 remaining money
-------------OR-----------
$30k income - 30% taxes = $20k spendable money + $10k taxes
$0 tuition = $20k remaining money
Now, the income rates are arbitrary but roughly fit the example and other replies. In the first scenario the university needs to pay the student $100 which is unlikely and an additional $20 in taxes is collected. In the second, the university only lays out $30 and 'gifts' $50 for tuition which, in reality, costs them significantly less. So they save on both ends of it...
If grad students made that much money, they'd skip the school and just take the job. The real problem here is the ridiculous cost of for-profit schools and them taking advantage of the laws to further their bottom line. Unfortunately students get caught in the middle and lose out.
I'd expect there's another available loophole - you simply offer a discount or 'preferred rate' for certain people (e.g. grad students). AFAIK if you buy something at a preferred rate you pay tax on the preferred rate.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
How exactly would you recommend making a meaningful contribution to government? Voting? What a joke. My vote is worthless just like yours is. We are at the whim of our D and R overlords who pick who their voters are and not the other way around. We have no meaningful control over spending.
Avoiding taxes helps me today at the expense of the next generation. But screwing over the next generation has been the thing to do since the New Deal. Promise people today tomorrow's dollars.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
No I mean you should get involved in the system, go work at a campaign office. Run for office yourself. Stop making excuses.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's doesn't levy a tax. It stops pretending that when a large business (a university) gives you something valuable that other people have to pay for, that it isn't compensation.
As long as they can declare the cost of tuition as a deductible employee expense, as a requirement of their employment, then I suppose it ends up not being an issue.
From a tax-simplification point of view, it certainly makes sense to count it as compensation. From a do-we-want-to-encourage-graduate-studies point of view, the consequences of increasing the costs of grad-student labor are probably something we want to avoid or mitigate.