RUSH: Greg in Dayton. Thank you for waiting, sir. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: God bless you, Rush, for what you do.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, it’s a great honor to speak to you. You want to know something that the liberals would probably just have a fit over, is if they started taxing the money parents spent for sending their kids to college as income to the kids that go to college.
RUSH: Whoa.
CALLER: If I made a hundred grand a year as a 19-year-old, I’d be paying tax on that money. But if you gave me a hundred thousand to send me to Yale, it would be a freebie to me. I wouldn’t have to spend a dime in taxes.
RUSH: I love that idea. Tax the kids’ tuition as income to the kid, right?
CALLER: Absolutely. If you didn’t go to college and you made a hundred grand, got lucky somehow and made a hundred thousand dollars at the horse races or wherever you made it, they’d be taxing you for that.
RUSH: One of the things in this deal is to extend the tax deduction for tuition. What we want to do is eliminate it and all these guys that send their kids to college, that tuition money’s income.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Make ’em pay. Everything else that comes to us that way is income, you’re exactly right.
CALLER: If I was 19 and my parents were paying me to go to Stanford or a really nice school or any school, you know what it costs these days.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: If those kids had to pay income they could defer it five, six years and go to the federal government —
RUSH: Well, the first 13,000 of it is a gift —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — tax-free.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And if you’re married, you know, the husband and wife together, the mom and dad could effectively give the kid 26 grand a year.
CALLER: Well, that doesn’t hardly touch some of the schools in —
RUSH: No, by the time you get into room and board you’re up to 40.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Up to 40.
CALLER: It’s a freebie.
RUSH: But they still have to come up with the money, they still have to come up with the money whether they’re giving it away or it ends up income they still have to come up with the money to spend.
CALLER: Exactly. Yeah. But the recipient, like the person who would be a recipient on the end of an estate tax, the estate has to pay it, basically the estate can’t pay it —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — because the person’s dead, right?
RUSH: Exactly.
CALLER: So the kid has to pay it. The heirs are paying the tax.
RUSH: Amen, bro, I like it. By the way, folks, stop and ask yourself this question. How much is the government losing on the tuition tax credit? That’s adding to the deficit. How much is the government losing, how much revenue? They talk about how much the government’s losing by keeping tax rates the same. How much is the government losing by paying people to go to college? If you take away the tuition tax credit, if there’s no tuition tax credit for people going to college, look how much more money the government’s gonna have. Why should the federal government suffer so people can send their kids to Harvard? Why? I mean if we’re talking about saving money, if we’re talking about costing the government money, let’s look at why do we want the home mortgage interest deductions? Look at all that’s cost the government. Why don’t we eliminate that? If we’re worried about how much it’s gonna cost the government, why does anybody have anything? ‘Cause look what that costs the government.