Tornado Alley (PROG)

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It's worse than that. It also affects college employees who get to go to school for free.



House G.O.P. Tax Writers Take Aim at College Tuition Benefits
By ERICA L. GREENNOV. 15, 2017

WASHINGTON — The moment the last of Fred Vautour’s five children walked across the stage as a Boston College graduate was priceless.

Not only did Mr. Vautour have the rare distinction of handing each of his children their diplomas, but he was also able to pay for their nearly 18 years of schooling by collecting trash, scrubbing toilets and mopping floors while the campus slept.

“As much as I struggled, it was incredible to be able to do that for them,” said Mr. Vautour, 64, who has worked the graveyard shift as a custodian at Boston College for 17 years. “I took this job for benefits, but never imagined this would be one of them.”

It may not be one for long — or at least could be severely curtailed. The sprawling House tax bill, set for a vote on Thursday, would tax the value of college tuition benefits conferred on thousands of university employees like Mr. Vautour, one of several provisions that would hit colleges, universities and their students, hard.

Republicans drafted the bill with the premise that it would simplify the nation’s tax code and cut rates for middle-income Americans. To help pay for the $1.5 trillion tax cut, lawmakers eliminated many individual tax breaks, arguing the overall plan would compensate for any lost benefits. The result: while many families and businesses would see tax cuts, a large percentage of undergraduates and graduate students would see their tax bills increase, some dramatically.

In addition to campus employees, many doctoral students would see huge tax increases, since the tuition that universities waive for them in exchange for working on campus as researchers and teaching assistants would be deemed taxable income. At expensive research universities like Stanford and Harvard, the new tax bills could swamp graduate-student stipends.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/us/politics/house-tax-bill-higher-education-increases-tuition.html?