Because it's a tax loophole. Employer perks are wage income and should be taxed. If they are not taxed, they are tax loopholes (like your employer-based health insurance, which is the biggest tax loophole in America). It's no different at a university just because the perk happens to be reduced tuition.
Is the bill closing even one CORPORATE tax loophole??? Corporations keep their SALT deduction and get a 20% rate, but all of a sudden the Republicans think it makes sense to take away loopholes for individuals?? They keep the carried interest loophole benefiting hedge fund managers but make tuition waivers for grad students taxable???
I don't see why the existence of some loopholes makes other loopholes justified. I also am not really worried about corporations: the best corporate income tax rate is 0%. Corporations should only pay tax on the unimproved land value of their property and whatever surtaxes are assigned to their utilities. They shouldn't get a deduction for those taxes anymore than individuals do, because Uncle Sam should not be subsidizing local and state governments through the tax code.
I guess you could say they should pay a VAT too, if support that kind of taxation.
I don't particularly care about the carried interest taxation. I am more interested in imposing a general tax on financial transactions than changing tax codes for hedge funds. Carried interest only seems to be a really huge issue for people who care majorly about income inequality, which is not something I'm interested in.
You're dodging the point.
How so?
I don't see why the existence of some loopholes makes other loopholes justified.
If we're writing a new tax bill to close all these alleged loopholes, why are we 1) not closing ANY corporate ones, and 2) lowering the corporate rate further?
Then again, you don't care about income inequality so I suppose you might actually be looking forward to the old days when the .1% lived in castles and everybody else were peasants. Unless, of course, I've misread your post entirely.
It's not a tax bill to close all loopholes. GOP House leadership picked this particular one to make up some of the money on their bill so they can give a tax cut elsewhere. There's probably a bi-partisan tax overhaul bill that will close more loopholes, but this bill obviously isn't it, and the GOP did not even make an attempt at it.
Why would it bother me that the corporate tax rate is going down? I support that. Like I said, I think the corporate income tax rate should be zero. You're also correct that I don't particularly care about income inequality, but even if I did, I don't think the tax code is the place to reduce inequality. We should be raising tax dollars in the least distortionary matter possible. If that means Warren Bufffet is charged 0% tax, it means Warren Buffet doesn't pay tax. You should address inequality on the SPENDING side, by ensuring money goes to poor kids, poor schools, poor whatever, instead of Warren Buffet. This makes intuitive sense to me.
The specific question is why conservatives aren't up in arms about the graduate student hit, though. At least that's the way I read it. It's because it's a tax loophole. It's also not a tax loophole that will affect me much (unlike the tax loophole on medical insurance, which I would like to keep...everyone likes their own tax loopholes).