The federal government, and think tanks, do most of the valuable research on terrorism and international affairs. There’s individual professors who are excellent, but as a whole, the quality of academic research on terrorism is below that of what’s being done by the government. If you want more anti-terrorism research, give more money to our national security agencies and the State Department.
No. PhD students aren’t getting benefits from this. There is literally NOTHING about this that is good for us. The increase in standard deduction doesn’t come close to covering how bad we’re about to be screwed over.
If the policy results in them not being able to pursue their degrees, it seems as if their “price” is more than it is for the rest of us. Will your tax increase force you to change your career?
Apparently not for the uber-rich.
I haven’t managed to keep up with this thread, so forgive me if this was asked, but if you are in favor of this policy, do you also favor taxing any and every thing of monetary value provided by your employer?
For example, H has a nice office with furniture and a computer he is permitted to use. Surely those things cost the company money and have monetary value which we could assign to the employee and tax with glee. The company cafeteria. The company workout space. Contributions to medical, dental, vision insurance. Life insurance benefits. A parking spot in the company lot. All that project management software training he has had in the past 2 years.
Come on people, use your imaginations. We have to pay for all those breaks we are about to give the people with their own private planes and golf courses. Surely we can find more things to tax if we put our heads together!
I believe that the current bill, including the crushing of grad students, is driven by the donor class. I am not aware of any credible economists who believe that this is good for the economy. The bill won’t pay for itself and won’t increase the growth of the economy.
Therefore, I think the best way to fight this is to enlist someone from the Republican donor class to lobby the Senate on this bill. Perhaps Bill Gates or some other prominent leader could make their voice heard. Unfortunately, most tech executives are not well liked by the donor class financing this initiative. Maybe some of the wealthier bankers will take up the cause when they see the supply of Physics Ph.Ds and econ Ph.Ds that generate their trading algorithms will be greatly diminished and might delay the day until they can write off their private planes.
It is really so ridiculous, it is hard to argue against this detritus of legislation without sarcasm.
As the donor class says, “We are tired of seeing the Middle Class benefit from that taxes that we don’t pay”
Thanks for this post, @romanigypsyeyes . I shared the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s article, from yesterday, on FB and twitter.
This probably redundant, but again sometimes a concrete example helps.
Grad students will take home less money, about 35% less, than someone who is eligible for food stamps. But, wait for it, they won’t be eligible for food stamps because their income is too high!
Who has the literary skills to pen “A modest proposal; let them eat (humanities) grad students”?
Details for the interested:
The gross income limit for food stamp eligibility for a household is $1276 a month or $15 312 annually. If the standard deduction is raised, as proposed, there will be no federal income tax due. Therefore let’s call the net takehome pay, $1276 a month. (It will probably be a little less allowing for any state or local taxes due even in the absence of federal income taxes. I don’t believe that SS is subtracted from this, but I could be wrong. If I am wrong, subtract the 7.65%. It doesn’t change this analysis substantially.) So, 1276 dollars a month takehome qualifies you for food stamp eligibility.
Using the numbers that @romanigypsyeyes provided from Michigan, with a gross of $20 397 and the annual waiver of $45 136, taxable income is $59 203. Income tax due will be $10 539. So takehome pay will be (20 397 - 10 539) / 12 or $821.50. That is (821.50 / 1276) or 64% of the income eligibility for food stamps.
However, because the grad stipend is $20 397 or $1 700 a month, grad students will be ineligible for food stamps.
May I humbly suggest you increase your donations to food banks in university towns next year?
I get your talking point, but many/most grad students are ineligible for food stamps anyway.
I don’t think PhD students will do this. It’s asking too much to ask them to live this way. I think they will take leaves from their programs and seek high paying jobs until the universities reorganize around the new reality, which they will eventually have to do. This a very intelligent group of people. Some will eventually continue their programs but others will build their lives differently than they had intended. It’s really a shame.
^some students ALREADY depend on food banks to live.
Many will take leaves of absence… and not return. Some will stay and “try to ride it out” looking for help wherever they can. Some will not start and/or go abroad.
As mentioned before, lots of other countries are eager to snap up our grad students. THat’s where future research, findings, and critical information will come from.
BTW, contact your local grad schools or department of interest, invite grad students this Thanksgiving (and next). There will be young people with nowhere to go regardless of the college. (I’m currently trying to help a kid at Penn, so these issues are everywhere.) Some will really appreciate a good, homecooked meal.
We have a random student from Germany joining us for Thanksgiving.
It makes a huge difference. There are lots of students who can’t be with family over the holidays for various reasons. Having a table to join is comforting.
@roethlisburger Your anti-PhD, anti-grad school sentiment is very worrying to me. The previous poster simply gave an example of valuable research being conducted on college campuses. Sure, it might not be world changing, but it is relevant. Moreover, much of this research can be viewed as training for more serious research that can be supported by the federal government/think tanks later.
The US government/people pay for so much already. Surely we don’t need to tax these starving grad students for what little they have…(Why can’t the US government cut back other programs to make up the tax cuts? )
Sciencenerd, this is how roethlisburger is. It’s unfortunate but representative of a large swath of the American public.
Every single major science organization has come out against this bill saying that it will bankrupt the US economy.
My kid is in the first year of a 4-year academic scholarship worth $200K over that period. Does anyone know whether I will have to pay tax on the scholarship under either the senate or congressional bills? We kind of planned our lives around this and have a second kid going to college next year. I think I would resent giving corporations a permanent tax cut if I will have to pay tax on this. I know that I all ready have to pay “kiddie” tax on any scholarship that will pay down room and board expenses, and I am OK with that because I understood that going into the college process. However, I have heard under the proposed bills how notoriously under-paid master’s and PhD students will be taxed on the tuition that they avoid owing to providing teaching and research services. But how will families of scholarship undergraduates be affected?
The grad school proposal has nothing to do with undergrad scholarships.
I think you should be more worried about the junk science being taught in some grad schools. In this very thread, we had a PhD promote the flat earth ideas: surveys don’t need to be random and studies don’t need to be reproducible.
I don’t think there has been any word about undergrad scholarships, or even graduate scholarships for that matter. It appears to be just the tuition waivers. At this point, at least. For what appears to be a very anti-science administration, it is not surprising to me.
@sylvan8798 , it’s the Congress, not the administration.
Well @roethlisburger
My kid is in the first year of a three year professional School scholars program with $100,000 in tuition waivers over 2017-2020. Guessing you think it’s just fine that she pay taxes on that, right? She does NOT receive a yearly stipend for living expenses. She gets paid $1200…only $300 a month for the 4 months per year she is doing her scholars work.
So…the tax liability for her will go from $0 a year…no income really…to well over $10,000 a year at some point.
Supporting this is beyond ridiculous especially on the backs of the tax breaks being allowed. Private planes, golf course maintenance, inheritance tax reduction…and a permanent corporate tax reduction.
Really…grad and professional students are getting stiffed.
I don’t think there are any proposed changes to the IRS scholarships rules. QEE is not defined as income. Any aid received that is not QEE is taxable to the student as unearned income, and taxed under the kiddie tax rules (which is of course insane as the student got the scholarship and it had nothing to do with the parents trying to hide income on a child’s return).
The new proposal is that they are going to define the tuition waiver for grad students as income as there is a requirement that the grad student do some kind of work for the university to receive it - work in a lab, teach, assist a professor, etc. Work. And work/income is taxed.
Law schools and medical schools have always done it. They charge full tuition and grad students pay it. Will English phd candidates and chemists be willing to go for advanced degrees if they have to fund it themselves?
I think if this tax reform passes there will be a compromise between the schools and the students. The grad students will be hired to do the work at a better wage (perhaps instead of a $35k stipend they will be paid $50k) and tuition will be lowered for them (as employees of the university?) and they will have to pay that amount or receive a traditional scholarship to cover it; it will no longer be a tuition waiver.