03-08-2024, 07:08 PM
These players should try working in a coal mine.
I remember a late night meeting in Winter Quarter 1986, perhaps at Terman, perhaps somewhere else, where they sprung the news on all of us teaching and research assistants that Uncle Sam was going to retroactively tax our fellowships, in addition to the taxes already pulled from our monthly stipends. The stipends were indeed salaries we used to pay for room, board, and the occasional (OK pretty frequent) trips to Larry Blake's Rathskeller in Berkeley.
No amount of not going to Larry Blake's Rathskeller in Berkeley was going to pay for taxes on a fellowship valued at $12,000. Yes kids, back in 1985 the total value of my free ride (free but for you know the hours and hours of work it takes to be a TA) to Stanford for an entire academic year was $17,000.
That room in Terman or wherever cleared fast as we all bull rushed Ace Hardware looking for pitchforks. The exit scene was straight out of AH with plenty of "bullshit <cough> bullshit" before storming out.
That all went away, thankfully. Retroactive?! If I knew that fellowship was going to be taxed, I would have passed on grad school completely and taken that job in freaking Midland, Texas. In petroleum engineering of all things. And.....I probably would have been laid off within two years.
I remember a late night meeting in Winter Quarter 1986, perhaps at Terman, perhaps somewhere else, where they sprung the news on all of us teaching and research assistants that Uncle Sam was going to retroactively tax our fellowships, in addition to the taxes already pulled from our monthly stipends. The stipends were indeed salaries we used to pay for room, board, and the occasional (OK pretty frequent) trips to Larry Blake's Rathskeller in Berkeley.
No amount of not going to Larry Blake's Rathskeller in Berkeley was going to pay for taxes on a fellowship valued at $12,000. Yes kids, back in 1985 the total value of my free ride (free but for you know the hours and hours of work it takes to be a TA) to Stanford for an entire academic year was $17,000.
That room in Terman or wherever cleared fast as we all bull rushed Ace Hardware looking for pitchforks. The exit scene was straight out of AH with plenty of "bullshit <cough> bullshit" before storming out.
That all went away, thankfully. Retroactive?! If I knew that fellowship was going to be taxed, I would have passed on grad school completely and taken that job in freaking Midland, Texas. In petroleum engineering of all things. And.....I probably would have been laid off within two years.