“ However, one of the tax reforms directly targets graduate students, a population not known for excess wealth. When universities waive graduate student tuition in exchange for teaching or research services, this waiver would become taxable.”

This has bothered me for some reason so, I did a little investigating. As it turns out, you are GREATLY exaggerating the effect here.

There are 1.8 million graduate level students in the U.S. and that number has increased only slightly since 2006. in 2016 there are 1.8% more grad level students than there were in 2006. That’s a 1.8% increase (or ~32,400 individuals) over 10 years.

Roughly 145,000 of those 1.8 million people get tuition waivers.

So in reality here, we’re talking about 8% of grad students that will be affected by this tax code change if it happens.

Is there a good reason why only 8% of grad school students should get to exempt their “in kind” income but other taxpayers (including the other 92% of grad students) don’t get the same break?