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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.
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. . . .
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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Here tuition is tax deductible, scholarships and grants are tax exempt and most if not all of your TA pay counts as a scholarship.
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!
Well, we all know what really matters is that there will be new tax breaks for people who own private planes. You know...the middle class.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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 '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.
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.
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.
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.
Definitely not. Trump is, first and foremost, an authoritarian, the exact opposite of a classical liberal. Classical liberals like JS Mill, John Locke, and Thomas Paine provided the inspiration for the American experiment in democracy.
Authoritarians like Hitler, Stalin, and Trump revile free speech, education, science, and empiricism. Divine authority cannot tolerate questioning. It requires unassailable certitude and ignorant compliance from the masses. So we can expect this new wave of Trumpism to make education, especially at advanced levels, a primary target.
Progressives are the reason this country exists. Conservatives prefer the authoritarian rulers, like King George, but progressives fought against that and formed a country where people had a say in their government. Those progressives are now the "left" you talk whine about.
The civil war, conservatives in the south seceded from the union... the actually broke up this country, something you claim "the left" wants to do, but never has. It took more progressives to stand up and say no... that this was a United country.
As a side point here... all this bullshit about confederate monuments being history or legacy... no. They are monuments to traitors to this country, who murdered hundreds of thousands citizens of the United States. Now, some intentionally ignorant prople may think "traitor" might be harsh... but, i use it in actual terms. Johnson pardoned the traitors, something he wouldn't have had to do if they were not traitors. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu...
"The left" isn't trying to destroy the country they created, but now days they are not willing to compromise with those who think that the rights and benefits of the country should only be for some of the citizens. That's the position of the conservatives.... and has been for a while. Conservatives railed against blacks having rights, and when they lost that argument, they switched to gays. Conservatives have to have someone to blame, because they simply cannot accept responcibility for ANYTHING they've done.
We do understand that out country has done some shitty things, but anyone with any functioning brain cells and open eyes should be able to see that. Global warmongers... yeh, that's us; more specifically, it's the god damn cowards we have in this country who are afraid of anyone that looks different, or big business that make their scratch off something some other country has and they want, or who directly produce military hardware.
Slavery... yeh, that was us. People enslaving people. I really should have to say that's bad, but there are some people in the world (and in the USA) who are simply so damn stupid they can't see that's a bad thing. Jim Crow laws.... yep, anyone with a brain could see that was bad. Sadly, again, we have a lot of people without functioning brains in this country.
Deplorable? Oh yeh, i get it... some people can't pay attention for more than a few seconds, so you need soundbites to help you out. Lets review:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.
I'd argue that she was right... maybe not on the percentage, but certainly on the characterization. She defined who those she thought were deplorable by their traits... which is why it's funny, in a sad, stupid way, that people wear these t-shits with "deplorable" written on it. I'd normally at least give them props for honesty, but i doubt any of them even know what Hillary said... they just think it's because they're Trump supporters, instead of someone having some of the worst traits of the human species. Kinda like these dipshits wearing Gadsen Flag t-shirts with the Jefferson quote... they don't even know what the quote was about, but they twist it to something simplistic that they don't have to bother thinking about; if they only had a clue... which they obviously don't.
Now, i understand.. you're probably like a lot of conservatives. You've been lied to by snake oil salesmen that want you to elect them, and you've been gullible enough to do just that. The problem is, these people only give a damn about themselves... not you, not me, not anyone that they can't get something from. They've brainwashed you into thinking completely backwards and ign
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's