GOP Tax Plan to Make Higher Education Costs Skyrocket
14 replies, posted
[QUOTE=The Verge]Farley is one of the thousands of graduate students who would be hit especially hard by Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. If it were to pass unchanged, roughly 145,000 graduate students could be responsible for suddenly paying taxes on the thousands of dollars in waivers that cover their tuition, but that never appear in their bank accounts. A House Ways and Means Committee spokeswoman told The Verge in an email that "the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is focused on providing tax relief," but then confirmed in a subsequent response that the bill would do the exact opposite for graduate students by taxing their tuition reductions: "This compensation would no longer be excluded from taxable income."
Academic research relies on PhD students. They're more like apprentices who teach and conduct research than like students in school. Many are paid a small stipend to live on, and their tuition is also typically waived by their university or paid by their faculty advisor's grants. Right now, those tuition waivers aren't taxed. But one terse line in the proposed tax bill could change that by taxing these waivers as additional income. "This is a fake number that is suddenly becoming real, and that's why people are panicking," says political scientist Robert Paul Musgrave at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
[B]Some, like Farley and fellow Rutgers student Nicole Dykstra, suspect they'll have to drop out if the bill passes.[/B] "The new proposal will be a sudden, unforecasted expense for us," says Dykstra, an Army Reservist who served in Iraq with the National Guard. Dykstra currently splits her time between Connecticut, where her husband works and lives with their six-year-old son, and New Jersey, where she's spent more than two years working towards her PhD. "If I were to leave right now, I would leave empty handed."[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/11/06/the-house-gop-tax-bill-would-raise-the-cost-of-college-we-cant-let-that-happen/"]Washington Post[/URL]
[URL="https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16619246/tax-bill-trump-gop-cuts-and-jobs-act-graduate-students-tuition-waiver-reductions"]The Verge[/URL]
[URL="https://www.wired.com/story/grad-students-are-freaking-out-about-the-gops-tax-plan-they-should-be/"]Wired[/URL]
of course it is. something something bootstrap millenials
Accessible higher education is a major threat to continued GOP dominance, so this is not surprising.
Just in time for me to already be applying to grad school!!!! Go fuck yourselves gop
Graduate tuitions are just imaginary numbers that are only accepted because more often than not they're waived anyway, taxing them as if you're actually making that all as income is bullshit since it has no bearing on actual finances.
how much more transparent can these people get
Here's the good news: if the tax reform doesn't pass, Republicans leave 2017 with basically no major legislation passed in nearly a year of controlling the Federal government and they're probably going to get slaughtered in the midterms, and if it does pass, the anger against the GOP for screwing everyone over so Trump's cronies can have a trillion dollar tax cut over ten years should by all rights be so extreme that Republicans get slaughtered in the midterms.
Truly, America is great again with tax "reform" like this.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52873111]Here's the good news: if the tax reform doesn't pass, Republicans leave 2017 with basically no major legislation passed in nearly a year of controlling the Federal government and they're probably going to get slaughtered in the midterms, and [B]if it does pass, the anger against the GOP for screwing everyone over so Trump's cronies can have a trillion dollar tax cut over ten years should by all rights be so extreme that Republicans get slaughtered in the midterms[/B].
Truly, America is great again with tax "reform" like this.[/QUOTE]
That's a nice sentiment but I don't think anyone that was previously voting Republican would only now say enough was enough. It seems people are pretty much set in their camps by this point.
I mean, unless you can link a study showing the number of "safe" states in each election is going down. In almost all US elections it's whoever has the most money funding their campaign that wins regardless of party or policies.
Making america great again by pulling up the ladder!
[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;52873135]That's a nice sentiment but I don't think anyone that was previously voting Republican would only now say enough was enough. It seems people are pretty much set in their camps by this point.
I mean, unless you can link a study showing the number of "safe" states in each election is going down. In almost all US elections it's whoever has the most money funding their campaign that wins regardless of party or policies.[/QUOTE]
It isn't about switching people from one camp to the other, it's about motivating the electorate enough to actually go out and vote.
Yet another reason for my list of why I've decided to move back to either the UK or EU. The American Dream is pretty lame tbh.
[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;52873135]That's a nice sentiment but I don't think anyone that was previously voting Republican would only now say enough was enough. It seems people are pretty much set in their camps by this point.
I mean, unless you can link a study showing the number of "safe" states in each election is going down. In almost all US elections it's whoever has the most money funding their campaign that wins regardless of party or policies.[/QUOTE]
Well, consider that this year Democrats have [URL="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/23/2018-fundraising-democrats-house-races-244044"]raised more campaign funds[/URL] than they have literally ever before. This kind of fundraising let Virginia flip fifteen seats like a day ago, and gave the Democrats the most legislative seats they've had in almost 20 years.
Democrats are [I]absolutely dominating[/I] at fundraising for the 2018 elections. Hell, in one district in Texas, [I]two[/I] Democrat candidates raised more money than the Republican incumbent. If money is all that matters, it's looking good. Just depends on whether or not the GOP has gerrymandered hard enough.
[QUOTE=F.X Clampazzo;52873457]Yet another reason for my list of why I've decided to move back to either the UK or EU. The American Dream is pretty lame tbh.[/QUOTE]
American Dream? Doesn't really exist anymore. It did in the 50's and 60's perhaps. Where minimum wage was a livable wage. You could own a house, a car, support your family on it, work for 25-30 years, get pay raises, get a pension, not NEED a college education for advancement...
You'd be extremely lucky, and the exception, if any of that applied to you today
The American Dream never existed imo. It's always been a sham, a pyramid scheme and maybe during the 50's and 60's you could still get in on it early enough to make it out alright but after that you're just whoring your self out door to door trying to sell whatever multi-level marketed garbage some rich asshole sold you on the premises it'd make your dreams come true.
[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;52873135]That's a nice sentiment but I don't think anyone that was previously voting Republican would only now say enough was enough. It seems people are pretty much set in their camps by this point.
I mean, unless you can link a study showing the number of "safe" states in each election is going down. In almost all US elections it's whoever has the most money funding their campaign that wins regardless of party or policies.[/QUOTE]
This. I've seen die-hard Republican voters break down and say that both sides are shit, but they also make it pretty damn clear what flavor of shit they prefer with statements alluding to how much shittier Democrats are, whether they had to pull some bullshit out of their ass or not.
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