THREAD: Something many have overlooked is that the GOP just voted to financially devastate grad students by taxing their tuition waivers. This is ridiculous. Let's say a grad student gets a stipend of $30k and a tuition waiver...this is common. 1/
Since the tuition waiver isn't income for the student, it's not currently taxed as income. The #GOPTaxScam just changed that. Now, a grad student will be taxed on their stipend and tuition waiver...meaning your taxable amount just went from $30k to $80k or more. 2/
That would mean the student could owe $10k or so in taxes. Only very wealthy students will be able to afford grad school. This really harms our research competitiveness, too. 3/
When orgs like NIH fund research into things like biotech, every dollar means $1.70 in output. That work is driven largely by grad students. Why would students go to school here in the US with this idiotic new tax burden? Oh right...they won't. They'll go abroad. 4/
All of this, just to give more money to corporations & wealthy people who are already doing just fine...record profits for corps & gains for the stock market. Combine this new grad student tax with losing the student loan interest deduction & we can see where this is going. 5/
An educated population is dangerous to an oligarchy. The GOP claims to be for jobs & econ prosperity for all, but this action shows otherwise. They are gutting our ability to innovate & educate to give their wealthy buddies a nice holiday gift. 6/
To that, I say: screw you, GOPers who voted for this. America won't forget your efforts to sell out your countrymen & women's educational future to help your cronies. We will vote you out next year. Mark my words. /#
