Providence (RI) mayor wants to tax college students

[thundley4]

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The mayor of Providence wants to slap a $150-per-semester tax on the 25,000 full-time students at Brown University and three other private colleges in the city, saying they use resources and should help ease the burden on struggling taxpayers.
Mayor David Cicilline (sis-ah-LEEN-ee) said the fee would raise between $6 million and $8 million a year for the city, which is facing a $17 million deficit.
If enacted, it would apparently be the first time a U.S. city has directly taxed students just for being enrolled.
The proposal is still in its early stages. But it has riled some students, who say it would unfairly saddle them with the city's financial woes and overlook their volunteer work and other contributions, including money spent in restaurants, bars and stores.
"We want to support the city as best we can, but financially is not really what we can afford to give," said Heather Lee, president of the Brown Graduate Student Council. "We're more able to provide labor, we're more able to apply the things that we're learning in the classroom, than we are to write a $300 check."

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I see how this works.0bama has talked about more funds for college students, and immediately another dimrat has their hand out wanting to take those funds away.    Spreading the wealth DimRat style.

[NHSparky]

Yo, David--how much do these students (more accurately, their parents) contribute to the tax base of the city through apartment rentals, taxes on purchases, food, nights out, etc?

Something tells me that you've not thought your cunning plan completely through.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Yo, David--how much do these students (more accurately, their parents) contribute to the tax base of the city through apartment rentals, taxes on purchases, food, nights out, etc?

Something tells me that you've not thought your cunning plan completely through.

Absolutely, this is BS, any of that load should have been cranked into sales tax rates (if the State has a local option or local taxing power) and real estate taxes on the housing where the students live.  This tax could well be a 14th Amendment 'Equal Protection' clause violation because the same could be said for anyone commuting into the city from outside the limits.  Singling out the students alone appears to be extremely questionable from a legal perspective.  Considering that there are likely already municipal real estate taxes on a lot of the housing used by the students (Though perhaps not on any owned by the school, that varies from State to State), the students probably pay more comparatively already than commuting workers do.

[MarshallLaw]

I bet they'll wind up doing what the local cities around here have done.

Enact a "user fee" not a tax.

It's $4 a month on anyone working inside the city limits, whether you live inside the city or not. It's for 'using' the roads and such.

They call it a 'fee' to get around the obvious negatives to it being a 'tax'. To me, if it looks like a tax, smells like a tax, crawls inside your wallet and eats your money like a tax, it's a tax.

I personally consider it unconstitutional since it was voted on only by city residents and applied to others who were not allowed to vote, i.e. those who live outside the city limits.

Of course, the courts ruled it was just peachy. Since, you know, it's not a tax.

[Bluesuiter-Retired]

And when parents get wind of this and send their son or daughter to another school and enrollment declines at those schools, what will the mayor do then?

[Sam Adams]

Yeah, seems unfair. The college students are not going to use city services, unless they actually reside inside the city limits. Would they use the public library, for example? No, they would use the college library. Maybe they use the police more (party hardy!), but I am guessing they use the ambulance services less than the old folks do.

Plus, college students tend to be relatively poor, so it's a real burden.

But they probably don't vote in the city elections, so I guess they are an easy target.

[EastFacingNorth]

I've lived in Rhode Island for quite a while now.  I lived in the city of Providence for over 3 years.  I've worked with and known socially kids from Brown, Johnson and Wales, RISD, RIC, and Providence College - and I love this.  The hypocrisy is delicious.

In all these schools, the student population leans hard to the left (and PC is the only one where the faculty doesn't as well).  These people have never met a tax they don't like - until this one, the one that affects them.

Sure, it's a bad idea.  Sure, there's plenty of good arguments against this tax.  Those same arguments, in many cases, are also good arguments against many causes that these students hold dear.

So f*ck 'em.

[Bluesuiter-Retired]

One would think that a portion of their tuition, etc., goes towards city services since the school pays the bill.

[Baruch Menachem]

Aren't the schools non profits and therefore exempt from taxes?   That is a lot of real estate that is beyond the reach of the tax man