New Tax Plan Contains Even More Bad News for Student Borrowers

[workinclasszero]

New Tax Plan Contains Even More Bad News for Student Borrowers
The Republican plan to crush students further unmasks the con of the Trump campaign
By Matt Taibbi 36 minutes ago

The headline in the New York Times seemed sympathetic: "The House Just Voted To Bankrupt Graduate Students".

The piece by Erin Rousseau, a graduate student at M.I.T., detailed an insidious little virus buried in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, just passed by Republicans in the House. The law would repeal section 117(d)(5) of the tax code, which gives graduate students who work on campuses a tuition waiver.

In the case of M.I.T. grad students like Rousseau – who work as teachers or lab assistants – the new law would tax over $50,000 of tuition they don't actually pay. It would increase such students' taxable income from the area of $33,000 to over $80,000. In most cases, that would add about $10,000 to their annual tax burden.

Getting already-struggling students to cough up $10,000 more would pay for the big-ticket item in the Trump tax plan: a reduction in the corporate tax rate to a flat 20 percent, down from a top rate of about 35 percent.

The reduction in the top corporate rate is more or less totally symbolic already. It's a fraud. The biggest and most successful of our transnational corporations already pay virtually nothing in American tax as it is, usually by moving profits to offshore havens.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-new-tax-plan-contains-more-bad-news-for-student-borrowers-w512423

[marybourg]

1. Yup. Several little life-changing bombs like that in

both Senate and House plans. But the important policy - giving even more tax cuts to the ultra wealthy - are all that matters to our current legislative majority.

[workinclasszero]

3. This horrendous tax bill will

crater the economy for all except the 1% and huge corps and that's all the fucking republicans care about.

[exboyfil]

2. In the Iowa public universities out of state/country

grad students that have assistantships pay in state graduation tuition rates (usually picked up by the university). I would assume that this new law would tax these benefits like the out of state rates.

[CrispyQ]

4. 21st Century Feudalism - that's the goal.

Only the rich will have leisure time, a good life, & nice things.

[workinclasszero]

5. Bingo

A Randian hellscape for us serfs unfortunately.

[LisaL]

6. Elections have consequences.

Just to think, all of this could have been avoided.

[workinclasszero]

7. Yes but Hillary couldn't walk on water so...

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

8. Kick