3 ms·

Good. If you want to subsidize education (or any activity), write a check, don't complicate the tax code.

• Fomite 9y ago
  This isn't a subsidy. It's a correction for a required administrative process.
  • darawk 9y ago
    > In broad terms, the bill would eliminate or consolidate a number of tax deductions meant to offset the costs of higher education for individuals and companies, including the Lifetime Learning Credit, which provides a tax deduction of up to $2,000 for tuition, a credit for student-loan interest, and a $5,250 corporate deduction for education-assistance plans. Sounds like a subsidy to me.
    • Fomite 9y ago
      The waivers aren't a subsidy.
      • darawk 9y ago
        The bill proposes taxing them. The waivers are a gift that has value. Not taxing them is the same as subsidizing them.
        • Fomite 9y ago
          A mandatory gift that is of no material benefit to the student that is generated as an administrative process is not the kind of gift that should be taxed. This would be like taxing you because I asked you to hold onto a $20 bill for me while I reshuffled my wallet.
          • darawk 9y ago
            It's barter. The students are trading their time for an education. That is a value transfer. There is nothing mandatory about it. Each party is consensually entering into an agreement to transfer services that have non-trivial value. If you could simply escape taxation by bartering, you'd see a lot more bartering. But you don't, because barter is still legally taxable.
            • throwawayjava 9y ago
              No. As noted elsewhere, no education is provided through 90% of these courses. They meet zero times per week and have no real instructor. They are a book keeping exercise so that PhD students are still technically students while working in the lab, not an actual tangible educational course. This is a just a significant decrease in research funding that is, by default at least, implemented as a substantial tax increase on grad students (those bastards...?), who now pay tax on 40k/year of tuition for literally imaginary courses. I agree the situation is awkward and stupid, but the material effect is what matters. Without a corresponding increase in science and education funding this is basically an enormous cut to science funding and undergraduate education funding. And it's one that is by default shouldered exclusively by people making 20k / year.
              • Fomite 9y ago
                This. What it actually is is a tax cut funded by a stealthy cut to the NIH/NSF/DoE/CDC etc. research budgets. It's eating the seed corn. Quietly, but it's there.
                • darawk 9y ago
                  No, what was stealthy was funding it this way in the first place. If you want to fund something, fund it. Don't fund it through tax policy. Tax policy should be about revenue collection, not funding research.
                  • spaceseaman 9y ago
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]