Death and Taxes
According to The Job Bored, quite a few students and teachers will be impacted by tax breaks that disappear this year.
As if teachers’ salaries weren’t already low, many teachers have to spend their own money to buy classroom incidentals. Certainly, no district is going to ask a teacher to buy a row of desks. But those murals on the wall? The construction paper that comprises the bulletin-board-of-the-month? Generally, those are paid for out of the teacher’s pocket.
In order to compensate teachers for this sacrifice, teachers were given a $250 tax deduction. Essentially, for teachers in the 28% tax bracket, this comes to a whopping $70. Still, it’s better than nothing. But as of the tax year 2008, this deduction goes away.
This deduction was intended to offset the expenses that teachers absorb as a part of their job. Why not just treat teachers better in the first place rather than make their financial situations suck just a little bit less through a relatively obscure tax deduction?
It’s not just teachers — learners get screwed too.
The up-to-$4,000 deduction for tuition and fees at colleges and universities? Gone after this year. I’m glad I finished my certification coursework in 2007. This does not affect the Hope Credit or the Lifetime Learning Credit, but both credits are more restrictive than the tuition and fees credit.
These deductions aren’t helping the rich. They’re enabling the poor to make it a little easier to improve their lives. The Bush administration parrots that anyone who wants to improve their lives and get a job paying more than minimum-wage in this global economy is encouraged to do so. The President and his cronies aren’t doing a whole lot to help the poor step up and show what they can do. But that’s to be expected — the poor are no friend of the President.
There is possible good news, however. This past November, Senator Sam Graves (R-MO) and others introduced bill HR 4057, the Teacher Tax Deduction Enhancement Act of 2007. The bill would extend the deductions for teachers until 2015, and each teacher would be allowed up to $500 of qualified deductions. The bill is currently before the House Ways and Means Committee. Two previous attempts at passing a bill of this kind failed — HR 4091 in the 108th Congress and HR 2868 in the 109th Congress.
I’m not holding my breath.
Tags: death and taxes, education, politics, tax breaks, taxes
February 25, 2008 9:02 pm 1 Comment
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By Pat R., February 27, 2008 @ 2:20 am
Okay, so you know how you need to make at least $3,000 in the past year to apply for the stimulus package? At my dishwashing job, I only made like $2,700 total. So I was like… O___O
Anyway, I never knew Congress had to vote on so many bills, like the Congratulate the Giants Bill and the Designate National Cowboy Day Bill, and yet I haven’t found any bill concerning getting rid of the penny, which would’ve been the first bill I introduced if I was a senator. But that’s just me.