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GOP Tax Plan: Destroy Graduate Education
There are multiple Republican tax plans that are difficult to keep up with. The House, Senate, and White House each have their own plans. The Democrats in office will have no say in the matter. The underlying theme is to cut taxes as much as possible for the wealthiest. It's difficult to uncover and track the many hidden gems within their devious plans but Smart Dissent will try to share as many as we can.
We as individuals must undertake Smart Dissent by speaking up loudly and hoping numerous Republicans in Congress see the light.
If the goal of the new tax plan is to shift the tax burden from wealthy, older Americans onto young, already-indebted students pursuing their higher education dreams, it's poised to be a smashing success.
There are a lot of anxious graduate students at universities around the country right now. That's because to help pay for more than $1 trillion in tax cuts for U.S. corporations, the House Republican tax plan would raise taxes on grad students in a very big way. These students make very little money to begin with.
The Republican House of Representatives tax plan would raise taxes by 300% to 400% on graduate students who are studying to become the future of our society, doing the research to create medical breakthroughs that make the U.S. great.
Let's briefly explain how:
.... in a great many fields (such as biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics), the only way [to obtain a Ph. D] is through teaching and/or research assistantships, which grant graduate students with a small stipend (in the ~$20K-$30K/year range) to live off of. These assistantships also come with a tuition waiver, valued at ~$12K-$50K/year, depending on the public-or-private, in-state-or-out-of-state institution. Currently, these tuition waivers....are not counted as taxable income. Under the new GOP tax plan, however, those tuition waivers would be taxed as regular income, making graduate school an unaffordable proposition except for those already independently wealthy.
By taxing the value of the scholarship provided by the university, a graduate student's tax bill would eat up their entire small stipend they are intended to live on. A stipend of $25,000 would be added to tuition of potentially $50,000 meaning taxes are owed on $75,000. Thus, the $25,000 stipend would almost entirely be needed to pay the tax bill. Why would anyone choose to go to graduate school then?
The smartest people in our society are given just enough money to survive while working and studying nonstop for years. But the GOP believes we should crush them.
The stupidity of this facet of the tax plan is hard to grasp until you remember the Republicans in Congress who wrote it are owned by their wealthy donors and have no concept or care for such trivial matters as the future of our society.
....it would discourage Americans from seeking advanced degrees at a time when the country badly needs a better educated workforce.... the plan wouldn't harm just grad students. If young people opt out of graduate education, the damage would be felt throughout the economy.
"Dollar for dollar, this might be the most misguided part of the plan," Kim Rueben, a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, says. "What you're doing is increasing the cost of going to graduate school ... and ignoring the fact that the government makes much more money if people have more education."
...the relatively small amount of money taken from grad students to pay for other cuts would stymie the country's growth in the future. The American Council on Education sent a letter to Congress decrying the plan. The letter was signed by over 30 academic organizations, including the Association of American Universities, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the American Psychological Association.
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