I don’t think corporate payments for tuition should be taxed, either. In general I think a more highly educated population is good for our country, even if some of them are lawyers. 
Flat tax is the only way to go. No regular citizen is going to be happy otherwise; what a massive waste of time is the 80K page tax code.
Bad example. Associates in Big Law start at a base of $190k, even those wet-behind-the-ears who may have never worked a day in the life. 
Me neither, unless they put the tax savings into say, more NSF fellowships-- tax-free, btw.
The difference, I think is that tuition remission is the waiving of a ‘debt’ for services that the college would otherwise have to pay for. In fact, colleges already do pay TA’s cash, after perhaps completing xx courses for ‘free’ as part of thier education, and even post-docs are on research salary/stipends.
Plumbers or electrician’s don’t have such a deal when apprenticing. Now, if the Master Plumber paid off training (educ.) debt of the apprentice plumber that would indeed be taxable income. No different than a couple of Law firms which are helping associates pay law school debt – just another form of compensation, and definitely taxable.
btw, bclintock what would you conclude about the economic theory relative to the post that alh made above:
Surplus of labor?
Of course, then there will still be complexity and arguments about “what is taxable income?”. That includes which types of things that could be argued as employee compensation should or should not constitute “taxable income”. Examples include the value of employer provided medical insurance and the value of tuition waivers as being argued here. Beyond that, self-employment, small business, or rental income needs to be defined for income tax purposes.
Okay, even with the plan on the table, we are NEVER going to a flat tax. Ain’t gonna happen.
IMO, the plan dubbed Treasury I back in the 80’s was as good as it can get. A few income tiers, and no deductions, eliminating SALT, mortgage insterest and charitable contributions.
The closest thing to a flat federal income tax recently is probably the disliked Alternative Minimum Tax, where there are only two main rates (26% and 28%) and fewer deductions than the regular federal income tax. However, it required calculating the regular federal income tax first and then removing the disallowed deductions (so it made calculating the tax more, not less, complicated), had a large standard deduction (effectively a 0% rate for the first portion of income, and a phase out at a higher range creating an effective unadvertised higher rate for some portion, making it less flat), and still allowed the special rates for capital gains and dividends (also making it less flat).
Then you also have the payroll tax, which is flat until reaching a high income, where it steps down (i.e. regressive). Making it even more regressive is that it only applies to labor income, not capital or other income that is a much greater share of the plutocrat-wealthy than for anyone else.
^This makes no sense to me. In neither case did the person get actual compensation, and in neither case should it be taxed.
The money is not received; it is an internal institutional transfer.
Receive:
transitive verb
1 :to come into possession of :acquire
The Marketplace mention:
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace/11092017
"1/09/2017: That’s the end of research in the United States
That’s what policy analyst Barmak Nassirian said when he saw the tax bill. He was thinking of the graduate students who work as research assistants and take advantage of certain tax breaks to offset the cost of their education, which is one of the deductions Republicans working on the bill are looking to slash. "
If the on the job training involves paying for $100k worth of classes with fees or tuition, then it very well could be taxable. Or using my paralegal analogy in #208, why is law school tuition and continuing legal education potentially taxable and junior associate mentoring not? One has a published sales price(tuition, fees) associated with it, while the other does not.
That looks like a market signal, we’re producing too many PhDs, at least in certain fields.
@roethlisburger, so if the same company provides the training as the employment, internal on-the-job training, you assert that this is taxable? The act of publishing a price makes it taxable?
Don’t most employers, be they employing lawyers or plumbers or baristas, hope the employees get better at their jobs as they intern or apprentice or just plain do the same thing over and over? Sometimes that extra experience (or efforts) does get compensated as a bonus, and that gets taxed.
The experience the plumber is gaining isn’t taxed because the head plumber isn’t charging the apprentice tuition and requiring an exam at the end of the apprenticeship. There isn’t anything to tax. The PhD students are getting tuition, the same tuition as non TA’s and RA’s are paying a certain amount for, so there is a value and the IRS can see exactly what it is.
Except there are no non-TA’s or non-RA’s in most programs. If you don’t get support, you don’t get in.
Still waiting for more evaluation of the Senate plan (would like to keep this thread open through the upcoming twists and turns of the decision process). 
@intparent, good point.
Stepping off for a while. If I ever see any of you in person, perhaps we could debate over some beverages.
What about an in-house MBA - the employer pays say a million dollars a year to a business school to come into their premises and teach a tailor-made MBA to say 15 employees?
I also get training from clients fairly often that counts as professional development units for professional licensing. I don’t pay taxes on the cost of that coursework.
There may be reasonable arguments for why tuition remissions should be taxable income. But the practical reality is that it is not tenable to tax someone with a very small salary on tens of thousands of dollars that they are never going to see. If this goes through, either schools will change their funding structure in a way that moots the new tax burden or graduate education will be totally gutted.
Maybe some people think that’s not a problem when it comes to the humanities and social sciences. But surely, even those who take a dim view of the work historians and sociologists do can see why it isn’t a good idea to discourage people from going into cancer research or energy policy.
I agree. Too much effort involved in discussing certain issues with the TOS rules here as enforced. Discussion over beverages would be preferable.