5 ms·

Its funny, so many of the people I speak with who either go to or went to Berkeley support raising taxes. They think if the government is better funded, it ca

by cgb223 9y ago

Its funny, so many of the people I speak with who either go to or went to Berkeley support raising taxes. They think if the government is better funded, it can provide more social good. But now that it's actually happening to them, there's this massive pushback. I don't know if this tax bill will be beneficial or not, I'm a coder, not an economist, but I do think there's just a bit of irony happening with this proposed tax increase.

52804375092485 9y ago
I think the part you're missing is that they support raising taxes on the very wealthy, not on college students who are barely scraping by as it is...
- friedman23 9y ago
  oh those poor poor Berkeley college students
  - krastanov 9y ago
    The demographics of college students and graduate students are nothing alike, and the article is about graduate students.
  - JohnTHaller 9y ago
    53% of Berkeley students have under $30k a year of income and receive an average of $14000 in aid.
    - megaman22 9y ago
      What are the 47% who make more than 30k a year doing, and going to school at the same time?
      - klipt 9y ago
        If they're undergrads that's probably counting their parents' income, not their own.
      - jedberg 9y ago
        I worked in University IT and made over $30K working part time during the school year and full time in the summer, as did most of my coworkers. Also, we made slightly more than the normal person because Social Security tax is waived for working students, so that's like a 7% bonus. When you're in the Bay Area and your students can choose to work for the University or go get a paid internship down the road, you have to compete on wages.
Retric 9y ago
This plan is not raising taxes, the total amount being collected ends up less. This is shifting tax burden from group X to group Y. I would be in favor of collecting enough money to start paying down the national debt. But, only if that money is collected evenly across the tax base not simply shifted to tiny sub groups.
krastanov 9y ago
The outrage seems reasonable, not ironic or hypocritical. I want to pay higher taxes (and I do donate money to charities and NGOs), but I do not want my taxes to be used to cover for the tax breaks of the super rich. We are in this all together, and we should all work to make our world better. You can argue that the government is bad at spending that money, but this is a completely separate complaint.
- ams6110 9y ago
  The rich already pay the lions share of income tax. How much more of their money needs to be taken from them to make it fair? Also the argument that the government is bad at spending money is exactly the point. I would possibly be supportive of higher taxes if I thought the money would be used to pay for useful things.
  - krastanov 9y ago
    To your claim about lion's shares: the federal tax code is progressive by a very slim margin, while state tax codes are regressive. Therefore, no, percentage-wise the rich are not paying more. And the complaint is that this particular plan will let the rich pay less, not that the rich should pay more.
    - paulsutter 9y ago
      45% of households pay no income tax at all. I'm not saying taxes are fair or balanced or anything like that. I'm just responding to your claim that the tax code is progressive by a "very slim margin". https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fed...
      - krastanov 9y ago
        I thought that "progressive" and "regressive" refer to what percentage tax you pay given what bracket (in dollars, not in percentile) you are. I would have thought that the 45% mentioned in the article is proof of how many Americans are poor, not that the tax plan is progressive. Even with a moderately regressive income tax the rich will be paying more total tax even though they are paying a smaller percentage of their income as tax. Therefore you can not make any conclusions about the fairness of a tax by saying that the top 20% of earners pay 80% of the total amount of income tax (it would have been absolutely crazy if this was not the case, unless everybody had the same income). As such, I do not see how this article can be used to say anything about whether the tax is progressive or regressive (and as you mentioned, whether it is fair altogether).
maxerickson 9y ago
It's more complicated than that though, the income that is going to be taxed here isn't money that gets handed to the students to do what they want with, it is money that the university pretends to pay them and then gives to itself. The sensible way to eliminate the special tax treatment would be to first change how the university does the accounting, so that a bunch of stuff that the university does for university purposes doesn't get imputed to the student as income.
gbacon 9y ago
Everyone thinks he pays his fair share of taxes. It’s that guy down the road …
- kolbe 9y ago
  Well, that's because everyone is undertaxed but me.
jrs95 9y ago
This isn't really that unusual since most of these students to tend to have low incomes when they'd be affected by this. What is funny though is how upset people were about potentially losing the ability to deduct state and local taxes, which is something that would predominately affect upper middle class people living in blue states who tend to support tax increases. Just on richer rich people than them, apparently.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  It seems reasonable to be against taking away tax deductions for state and local taxes; you're asking to be able to deduct taxes paid to a government. As a counter-example, it's also legal to take deductions for foreign taxes paid on foreign income. And plenty of lower-income people also pay state and local taxes. It's hardly the same thing as taking away, say, the mortgage interest deduction.
rconti 9y ago
Probably because they support taxes on actual income, not taxes on money they've never seen.
- camiller 9y ago
  arguably, the tuition being waived does have a value and is given as part of employment compensation. How would it be any different that if my employer provided a free gym membership, which is considered taxable income even though it is money I never get.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
Generally most people regard it as unjust to charge income tax on money that is never made as income.
- CWuestefeld 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is false. That's why folks don't use barter in order to increase their buying power by a third. Even if dollars didn't change hands, the value of what did still counts for your taxes. Even campaign finance laws reflect this. Suppose you're an airline and you write off the costs of a candidate's tickets when he flies around the country campaigning. The value of those tickets must be recognized as a campaign contribution.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >Even campaign finance laws reflect this. Suppose you're an airline and you write off the costs of a candidate's tickets when he flies around the country campaigning. The value of those tickets must be recognized as a campaign contribution. Ah, but you don't write off the costs of airplane tickets for the cabin staff, which is what would really fix the analogy here. Grad-students are serving as employees and trainees of their advisors. In industry, you would never, ever ask a trainee to pay twice their wages in "training costs" to their employer. They'd leave, and never look back. I agree with people in the other thread that we really should find a way to end the legal fiction that PhD students with "tuition waivers" are being charged or paying any tuition at all. They're something between interns and entry-level employees, except of course that charging interns for the internship remains illegal.
    - CWuestefeld 9y ago
      Perhaps there are really two separate relationships between the school and the grad student, and we're confusing everything by conflating them. On one hand they're acting as researchers and TAs, and being paid (a pittance) for that. On the other hand, they're students buying educational services from the school, which they're putatively paying for out of their compensation package.

by cgb223 9y ago

52804375092485 9y ago

I think the part you're missing is that they support raising taxes on the very wealthy, not on college students who are barely scraping by as it is...

friedman23 9y ago
oh those poor poor Berkeley college students
- krastanov 9y ago
  The demographics of college students and graduate students are nothing alike, and the article is about graduate students.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  53% of Berkeley students have under $30k a year of income and receive an average of $14000 in aid.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    What are the 47% who make more than 30k a year doing, and going to school at the same time?
    - klipt 9y ago
      If they're undergrads that's probably counting their parents' income, not their own.
    - jedberg 9y ago
      I worked in University IT and made over $30K working part time during the school year and full time in the summer, as did most of my coworkers. Also, we made slightly more than the normal person because Social Security tax is waived for working students, so that's like a 7% bonus. When you're in the Bay Area and your students can choose to work for the University or go get a paid internship down the road, you have to compete on wages.

Retric 9y ago

This plan is not raising taxes, the total amount being collected ends up less. This is shifting tax burden from group X to group Y. I would be in favor of collecting enough money to start paying down the national debt. But, only if that money is collected evenly across the tax base not simply shifted to tiny sub groups.

krastanov 9y ago

The outrage seems reasonable, not ironic or hypocritical. I want to pay higher taxes (and I do donate money to charities and NGOs), but I do not want my taxes to be used to cover for the tax breaks of the super rich. We are in this all together, and we should all work to make our world better. You can argue that the government is bad at spending that money, but this is a completely separate complaint.

ams6110 9y ago
The rich already pay the lions share of income tax. How much more of their money needs to be taken from them to make it fair? Also the argument that the government is bad at spending money is exactly the point. I would possibly be supportive of higher taxes if I thought the money would be used to pay for useful things.
- krastanov 9y ago
  To your claim about lion's shares: the federal tax code is progressive by a very slim margin, while state tax codes are regressive. Therefore, no, percentage-wise the rich are not paying more. And the complaint is that this particular plan will let the rich pay less, not that the rich should pay more.
  - paulsutter 9y ago
    45% of households pay no income tax at all. I'm not saying taxes are fair or balanced or anything like that. I'm just responding to your claim that the tax code is progressive by a "very slim margin". https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fed...
    - krastanov 9y ago
      I thought that "progressive" and "regressive" refer to what percentage tax you pay given what bracket (in dollars, not in percentile) you are. I would have thought that the 45% mentioned in the article is proof of how many Americans are poor, not that the tax plan is progressive. Even with a moderately regressive income tax the rich will be paying more total tax even though they are paying a smaller percentage of their income as tax. Therefore you can not make any conclusions about the fairness of a tax by saying that the top 20% of earners pay 80% of the total amount of income tax (it would have been absolutely crazy if this was not the case, unless everybody had the same income). As such, I do not see how this article can be used to say anything about whether the tax is progressive or regressive (and as you mentioned, whether it is fair altogether).

maxerickson 9y ago

It's more complicated than that though, the income that is going to be taxed here isn't money that gets handed to the students to do what they want with, it is money that the university pretends to pay them and then gives to itself. The sensible way to eliminate the special tax treatment would be to first change how the university does the accounting, so that a bunch of stuff that the university does for university purposes doesn't get imputed to the student as income.

gbacon 9y ago

Everyone thinks he pays his fair share of taxes. It’s that guy down the road …

kolbe 9y ago
Well, that's because everyone is undertaxed but me.

jrs95 9y ago

This isn't really that unusual since most of these students to tend to have low incomes when they'd be affected by this. What is funny though is how upset people were about potentially losing the ability to deduct state and local taxes, which is something that would predominately affect upper middle class people living in blue states who tend to support tax increases. Just on richer rich people than them, apparently.

jogjayr 9y ago
It seems reasonable to be against taking away tax deductions for state and local taxes; you're asking to be able to deduct taxes paid to a government. As a counter-example, it's also legal to take deductions for foreign taxes paid on foreign income. And plenty of lower-income people also pay state and local taxes. It's hardly the same thing as taking away, say, the mortgage interest deduction.

rconti 9y ago

Probably because they support taxes on actual income, not taxes on money they've never seen.

camiller 9y ago
arguably, the tuition being waived does have a value and is given as part of employment compensation. How would it be any different that if my employer provided a free gym membership, which is considered taxable income even though it is money I never get.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

Generally most people regard it as unjust to charge income tax on money that is never made as income.

CWuestefeld 9y ago
I'm pretty sure this is false. That's why folks don't use barter in order to increase their buying power by a third. Even if dollars didn't change hands, the value of what did still counts for your taxes. Even campaign finance laws reflect this. Suppose you're an airline and you write off the costs of a candidate's tickets when he flies around the country campaigning. The value of those tickets must be recognized as a campaign contribution.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >Even campaign finance laws reflect this. Suppose you're an airline and you write off the costs of a candidate's tickets when he flies around the country campaigning. The value of those tickets must be recognized as a campaign contribution. Ah, but you don't write off the costs of airplane tickets for the cabin staff, which is what would really fix the analogy here. Grad-students are serving as employees and trainees of their advisors. In industry, you would never, ever ask a trainee to pay twice their wages in "training costs" to their employer. They'd leave, and never look back. I agree with people in the other thread that we really should find a way to end the legal fiction that PhD students with "tuition waivers" are being charged or paying any tuition at all. They're something between interns and entry-level employees, except of course that charging interns for the internship remains illegal.
  - CWuestefeld 9y ago
    Perhaps there are really two separate relationships between the school and the grad student, and we're confusing everything by conflating them. On one hand they're acting as researchers and TAs, and being paid (a pittance) for that. On the other hand, they're students buying educational services from the school, which they're putatively paying for out of their compensation package.