$600 Without Tax

Any college student who plays the numbers should back 599, a figure with magical qualities bordering on the occult. This number is most potent during the summer months. Turning zealous vacation workers into loafers, it makes honest students throw over well-paying jobs a good month before school would make them quit. The number is, of course, the sum a student may carn before he is no longer a deductable item on his guardian's income tax but becomes, himself, another prop to the national debt.

For any student who wants to help pay his own way through college $599 is an absurd figure at which to stop: even state university expenses far outweigh this. But stop he must. Unless his salary is either fantastically high or lasts throughout the year, the student worker often loses money by carning above that mark. In addition to his tax on salary above $600, his guardian must pay a sizable sum when the student is no longer classified as a dependent.

It is illogical for a country that prizes education enough to offer college students draft deferments to turn about and hinder their attempts at partial self-support. President Eisenhower seems to agree. He has proposed that a student be considered a legitimate tax exemption regardless of the size of his own income, providing that be actually receives support from home. Naturally, he would continue to pay a tax on carnings above $600.

This plan is practical and fair. It would end a student's claim to dependency at the logical figure--the one at which he no longer needs family support. The only difficulty would be to determine where support stops and indulgence begins. Parents whose only contribution to a student's education might be a new Jaguar and a Brooks Bros. charge account should not be permitted to claim his as a dependent. So even under the new system some arbitrary limit is necessary. (Perhaps it could be based on the total cost of tuition, room and board with a constant figure added for "expenses.")

Whatever the specific amendments to Eisenhower's proposal, a good start toward an equitable solution or program of student tax exemption is expedient.