Last time I checked…professional school WAS required for future doctors, lawyers, and dentists…I’m sure there are others too. 
And none are free.
Grad school is required for a lot of things.
Take a look at nytimes article. It’s not a credit for the cost of tuition. It allows you to use money, up to $10k a year, from a 529 plan for private k-12. The Nytimes estimates that would be worth more than $30k total per child, if you sent your kid to private school for 13 years.
Yep. And last time I checked, those occupations pay far more than the national average.
The point was about public schools being free to K-12, which is required by law that children must attend. The law does not require one to attend a professional school, that is a choice. And it is incredibly competitive to get into those schools, so they are not free.
Ah, okay, I thought it was a deduction for the entire cost.
I could see the sense of getting rid of some of these deductions, if they were getting rid of ALL deductions, and lowering the rates. But selectively deleting some and adding more, this is not simplifying taxes, as tax reform was supposed to go. This is still social engineering in a way that is distasteful to the majority (I’m assuming).
Thanks for the private school clarification. Honestly…that is fine…it’s 529 savings.
But I still do not support taxing grad and professional school tuition waivers. In my opinion, these are merit awards, like scholarships.
This current proposal, in my opinion, is not tax reform. It is tax reapportionment. Robbing from poor Peter to give to wealthy Paul.
Literally.
And mostly to large corporations who are unlikely to expand anyways.
I wonder if we should frantically buy stock in big companies if this passes, as they perform stock buybacks and pay dividends.
And the NYT article of a $2300 savings is based on putting $200,000 into the 529 plan at birth. How many people do you know who could do that? My kids went to a catholic grade school and I’d never heard of a Coverdale account since I was trying to figure out how to pay tuition and buy school shoes in the same week. I was trying to save for college, but I might have been more willing to put money in a 529 if I knew I could use it for grade schools or high school. College seemed so far away when they were in K. It would have been a nice state tax break for me to even put money in and take it out before it had grown for a long time.
I think this really is a middle income tax break. If someone can afford to fund a 529, why shouldn’t they get to use it when their kids are in grade school and high school? Some high school tuition, even for just a Catholic school ($10k-20K) and not a $30k private prep school, costs more than public university tuition. My nephew’s high school and college were about the same price, so why should the government care if the tuition is paid to a high school or a college? Some people who pay a premium for a good high school reap the benefit by getting lots of college scholarships!
Yes…they could get good scholarships…but remind them NOT to take tuition waivers for grad school unless they have enough money in the bank to pay the taxes on these waiver amounts.
Sure many are in fact free. One thing that I learned on cc is that a PhD program that was not fully funded, i.e., “free”, is not worth attending. Whether you concur with that statement is not important, but the point is that there are “free” PhD programs (today, with tuition waivers+living stipends+health benefits). But yes, ‘incredibly competitive’.
@bluebayou PhD programs…fully funded will now cost these students a ton in taxes on their tuition waivers.
And what about professional schools? Students getting waivers to professional schools are not all that common…usually part of a scholars program or similar. Often no stipend except the tuition waiver.
Perhaps for some private schools, but the impact on instate publics could be a whole lot less. (I posted an analysis from UC Berkeley grad earlier comparing UC and MIT.) However, the wealthy privates have plenty of money to adjust the stipend, should they so choose. (They won’t want to miss out on top talent.)
I think you answered your question thumper:
Correct. Instead, professional schools tend to offer merit money, which will presumably remains tax free. (btw: Harvard, Yale and Stanford professional schools offer need-based aid, but no merit, at least in their Law schools.)
So why wouldn’t a tuition waiver for a scholars program be considered a merit award?
^^I would think that it very well could be considered merit, if it doesn’t require TA’ing in the Professional School. Of course, the Uni’s lawyers/tax gurus will opine on how their program fits the tax laws.
btw: how many professional schools actually have many current students as TA’s? (My son was a TA in law school for an intro class, but he was paid in 1099 money, not via tuition waiver.)
New (at least to me) scoring from that bastion of left-wing liberal thinking, the congressional budget office, shows the distributional effects of the spending cuts. This is not the distribution of the tax cuts, but the distribution of the required spending cuts.
Spoiler alert: It favors the rich.
If your income is less than $10,000 the changes will cost you $9,720 by 2027. If your income is greater than $1,000,000 the government spending changes will benefit you $440 by 2027.
Source: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/53333-wydenletter.pdf
(I hope I am not in violation of TOS here as this is a link to a government web site.)
Formally, if you read this report, it was requested by Orrin Hatch.
Irony is dead.
I was specifically referring to the post about professional schools for doctors, lawyers, and dentists. To my knowledge those are not free unless you have the military paying for your professional school. I didn’t even think you could get a merit scholarship to cover all your tuition, but perhaps you can.
And with the military, even though they’re “free”, they still make you pay in many years of military commitment. My “free” college tuition and “free” pilot training incurred seven years of commitment.
@busdriver11, and the cost of the training was not taxed.
For the record, I vigorously support ROTC scholarships, free tuition at the service academies, and the GI bill.
My apologies for mis-interpreting, bus driver. But CFang also made the claim:
Perhaps CF also meant Professional schools?