Patrick W. Thomas
Professor of the Practice, Notre Dame Law School

We’ve all been poring over the GOP tax bill, released last week. On my initial read, I mainly looked at those provisions that affect my own practice in a Low Income Taxpayer Clinic: the expansion/restriction of the Child Tax Credit; the elimination of the dependency exemption; and the lack of any expansion in the Earned Income Tax Credit (paging Paul Ryan…). Selfishly, I also calculated the bill’s effect on my own taxes: a nearly 3% tax cut that I do not need!

Or so I thought. You see, my wife is a Ph.D. student in computer science who, like most students at the University of Notre Dame, receives a full tuition waiver, in addition to a stipend from the university. As I returned home on Friday, ready to put the tax bill out of mind for a couple hours, I saw a tweet from Claus Wilke, professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas:

1. GOP tax bill would tax tuition wavers for grad students. This would be a disaster for US STEM PhD education.https://t.co/4BFPCbkNbQ

— Claus Wilke (@ClausWilke) November 3, 2017

Uh oh. Back to tax policy on a Friday night, it seems. And, perhaps, so long to that tax cut. Continue reading “GOP Raises Taxes on Graduate Students … Or Does It?” →