What Do You Think About Higher Education Tax Breaks?
Higher education tax breaks are a good thing, right? Sounds good to me - promotes access to education, right? But are the tax breaks always on target?
Stephen Burd doesn’t think so. Burd, a Senior Policy Analyst at Education Sector, says we should eliminate the American Opportunity Tax Credit in order to strengthen the Pell Grant program. In his report Moving on Up: How Tuition Tax Breaks Increasingly Favor the Upper-Middle Class, Burd states that between 1999 and 2001, over 80 percent of higher education benefits went to families earning less than $75,000 per year and no tax benefits went to families earning more than $100,000. However, since 2009 almost a quarter of the tax benefits went to families earning between $100,000 and $180,000, with the amount going to middle-income families declining.
Burd notes that if the tuition tax credit were eliminated, more money could go into the Pell Grant program, the largest source of government financial aid to low-income students, providing tuition assistance to those who need it most.
More interesting policy info from Education Sector
More about Pell Grant funding from New America's Ed Money Watch Blog
