Graduate students to protest proposal to tax tuition waivers

WASHINGTON — Graduate students around the U.S. are staging campus walk-outs and lobbying Congress in an effort to keep their tuition waivers tax-free.

They have the support of their schools in arguing that a provision in the House Republican tax bill could, as graduate student Shawn Rhoads says, “upend the American PH.D. system.”

Rhoads is pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience at Georgetown University. He worries that if the House tax bill becomes law, his annual tax bill would balloon so high that he’d be unable to make ends meet.

“It’s an outrageous financial burden for graduate students,” said Rhoads, 24, who works as a research and teaching assistant at the university in the nation’s capital.

Many schools waive tuition as a benefit for students who work as teaching or research assistants while pursuing advanced degrees. Under current rules, it’s not taxed as income.

But the House tax bill approved in November would make the amount of the tuition waiver taxable. The Senate’s version would keep the tuition waivers tax-free.

A group of graduate students from Illinois, North Carolina, California and other states announced plans to protest at House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office in Washington on Tuesday, citing the waiver provision and other parts of the tax bill that they say will “devastate higher education.”