A tax bill passed by the United States House of Representatives would eliminate a deduction for interest paid on student loans, a move that could have an impact on undergraduate and graduate students alike.

The Senate bill, passed Saturday morning, does not remove the deduction but is subject to change when the House and Senate compromise on the final version. Republican lawmakers rushed the process to try and get the bill signed into law by Christmas.

The student loan interest deduction is available to any eligible taxpayer in the U.S. who pays interest on student loan debt, allowing taxpayers to deduct up to $2,500 in student loan interest annually.

About 12 million people used the deduction in 2015, according to the IRS.

“I just see it as a continued part of this calculated attack on higher education, which would overwhelmingly harm the working class and the middle class,” said Maria Carson, a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the department of religion at Syracuse University and an organizer for Syracuse Graduate Employees United.

From 2007 to 2016, the cost of the student loan interest deduction more than doubled, totaling about $2 billion in 2016, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Student loan balances increased at nearly the same rate, but the maximum amount that can be deducted has stagnated — capping at $2,500 in 2001.

The plan to charge college students more in taxes could have been spurred by Republican lawmakers’ search for ways to offset revenues and pay for tax cuts they want, said David Plank, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education at Stanford University; the University of Southern California; and the University of California, Davis.

“That creates a political problem, which is that they have to decide what taxes to raise and whom to ask to pay for the corporate tax cuts and other things that they really want,” Plank said.

According to the same Pew study, the average tax deduction for college graduates in New York was between $84 and $99, close to the U.S. average of $88.

Undergraduate students at SU had an average of $27,000 in federal loan debt after graduation in 2016, according the College Scorecard. That number does not include Parent PLUS loans or private loans.

Only students who take out loans in their name can receive this deduction. The tax from loans taken out by a student’s parents, such as the Parent PLUS Loan, are ineligible for the deduction.

“It hits undergrads after they graduate,” said Brian Hennigan, a graduate student and member of Syracuse Graduate Employees United, an organization attempting to secure a graduate employees union at SU. “The amount of debt we owe is skyrocketing and insane, so anything that would add to our indebtedness is a terrible, terrible thing.”

Patricia Kaishian, a graduate student employee at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry who makes about $13,000 annually, said her education may become untenable if her taxes go up.

“I think that’s kind of a crazy situation given the state of our current debt, and I think it will make education that much more unreachable for all types of people, particularly low-income people, people of color, people with disabilities, et cetera,” Kaishian said.

Graduates students, professors and the Syracuse community rallied Wednesday against the House bill that would also count tuition waivers for graduate students as income and could drastically raise income taxes.

Dana Cloud, a professor of communication and rhetorical studies at SU, said the plan to eliminate the deduction could financially cripple workers with low incomes, such as adjunct professors.

The GOP could have rushed to push out the tax legislation to give President Donald Trump a political win after nearly a year of several of his major legislative projects being sidelined or stopped, said Kristi Andersen, a professor emerita of political science at SU.

“He has accomplished a lot by kind of disemboweling the EPA and other kinds of things, but he hasn’t accomplished much legislatively,” Andersen said.

Published on December 3, 2017 at 10:15 pm

Contact Kennedy: krose100@syr.edu | @KennedyRose001