CURMUDGUCATION: The Problem With Tax Credit Scholarships

CURMUDGUCATION: The Problem With Tax Credit Scholarships

The Problem With Tax Credit Scholarships

The classic talking point for tax credit scholarships (yet another type of voucher) is that they don't actually take money away from public education. This is technically correct because the money never actually gets into the government's hands; instead of paying taxes, the contributor hands the money to their favorite charter or private school and gets credit for paying taxes.

So does that take money away from education? Of course.

Let's imagine a neighborhood in North Egg with ten households. Out of those households, there are five children who spend every Saturday cleaning up the neighborhood. The families, many of whom include folks who work on Saturday, decide that the kids need something to eat for lunch, so the ten households create a Saturday Lunch Fund, and every family commits to chip in two bucks to the fund. Mrs. McSam handles the collecting of the money, and uses it to buy the workers a couple of pizza, some drinks, and a few extras to go with.

This system works for a while. Some Saturdays the pizza's not very good, and sometimes the dessert item is some pretty good ice cream and other times it's some kind of packaged processed junk. But for the most part, the basic needs of the workers are met.

Then one of the families says, "We actually take our nephew from a South Egg out to lunch every Saturday. Could you just count the money we spend on him toward our contribution for the Saturday Lunch Fund?"

"I don't see why not," says Mrs. McSam. "It's not like you're taking money out of the fund."

Two other families say, "We don't actually have any kids. But we do buy organic kelp for our church CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: The Problem With Tax Credit Scholarships