University Graduate Students Walk Out To Protest Tax Plan That Hurts Them

[question everything]

Graduate students around the country walked out of their classes, office hours, and research labs to protest the House Republican tax plan Wednesday.

"This plan is going to be disastrous for higher ed," said Jack Nicoludis, a Harvard graduate student in chemistry, who helped organize a protest on the campus. He said the bill would more than double his taxes.

In exchange for teaching courses or teaming up with professors on research projects, universities don't charge many Ph.D. students tuition, and give them modest stipends. The House bill would end the tax break students get on the value of their tuition waivers.

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Jonathan Brower, a seventh-year Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland's history department, said the university gives him $20,000 a year in exchange for working as a history instructor, a job that he says is extremely labor intensive.

On top of teaching, Brower is responsible for running conferences and writing his dissertation, and he receives a $20,000 tuition waiver.

The stipend doesn't exactly fund a lifestyle of luxury. Brower is paid biweekly, and he's often down to pennies before his direct deposit hits, despite living with his parents.

The plan would tax the value of students' free tuition — meaning students like Brower would have to pay taxes as if he made $40,000 a year.

And that's a massive difference to a group of people that make very little money.

More..

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/29/567169910/university-graduate-students-walk-out-to-protest-tax-plan-that-hurts-them

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Sure go after nickels and dimes of $20K here and $20K there and eliminate the AMT and the estate taxes.

[anneboleyn]

1. I got my Ph.D. From a private university. I know how disgusting and damaging this ridiculous tax

on grad students will be. Nobody in my program could have afforded to pay the “taxes” on a $50,000 tuition waver, which we were given as part of our fellowship packages. We were obligated to teach courses and obviously research and write our dissertations (and publish and attend conferences) while receiving our little stipends of about $14,000 a year. We never saw the tuition waver. How that can be counted as income is beyond me. This will kill off many grad programs across the country.