Here's a lawsuit that could create a form of school vouchers through tax deductions if the plaintiffs are successful.
A Jewish couple's bid to take a tax deduction they say the IRS reserves only for members of the Church of Scientology is getting a friendly reception from a federal appeals court, increasing the possibility of a ruling that could create a tax break for taxpayers of many religions who pay tuition to religious schools.During arguments on the case this week, three judges who ride the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals expressed deep skepticism of the IRS's position that the way the agency treats Scientologists is irrelevant to the deductions the Orthodox Jews, Michael and Marla Sklar, took for part of their children's day school tuition and for after-school classes in Jewish law.
"The view of the IRS is it can unconstitutionally violate the Constitution by establishing religion, by treating one religion more favorably than other religions in terms of what is allowed as deductions, and there can never be any judicial review of that?" Judge Kim Wardlaw asked at the court session Monday in Pasadena, Calif.
Basically the IRS has been allowing scientolgists to deduct the cost of their "education" from their taxes since at least 1994, but refusing to treat Christians, Jews, Muslims, or any other religion the same way. Apparently there's quite a history between the IRS and Scientology, and the IRS agreed to this special treatment in exchange for the Church of Scientology dropping thousands of lawsuits against the agency in 1993.
A policy of tax-deductible private school tuition would be superior to any form of distributivist school voucher scheme I've yet seen. Let's hope this case continues to play out favorably.
(HT: TaxProf Blog.)
On the one hand, the Constitution (ideally) prevents the government from giving preference to one religion over another. So those Jewish folks should get the same as the Scientologists (leaving aside for a second the issue of whether Scientology is a proper religion; Even I admit that some religions are crazier and less useful and more scam-like than others. Judaism and Scientology are almost the two extremes in the craziness spectrum, only slightly outdone by Buddhism and suicide cults respectively).
On the other hand, should we be able to refuse to pay taxes that go towards services we don't use? What if I never got a book out of a public library, or don't drive, or don't go to public hospitals, or never needed the services of firefighters, or don't visit national parks... (I actually do do all these things, but I could choose not to - and I certainly have not made used of homeless shelters or welfare or the prison system, not directly anyways). Could I then not pay the fraction of my taxes that goes towards those things? Doesn't this put the government in a spot where it would have to deny some public services to some people? How will it keep track of who paid for what? And isn't the whole point of society that we all pitch in a little bit for the sake of everybody benefiting, even when we don't directly benefit ourselves, as opposed to an "a la carte" method where people who can afford basic things don't help finance those basic things for the people who can't afford them?
You could say that some government services we either benefit from directly or don't at all (public schools), while others we all benefit from indirectly (prisons), but it's not clear where one ends and the other begins: I like to live in a country with a well-educated population, I'll pay a little for everyone's education even if I put my kids in private schools. But even if most people would not share my take on that, and even if you could argue that you personally get NO benefit from public schools, it still seems to me that the idea of "society" requires that you pay/contribute/sacrifice so that those weaker or less fortunate can still have the things we all agree are basic enough that no one should go without. I guess I must be a commie.
BM: I think that it's easy to make a case that everyone benefits from public schools in a very similar way to how we all benefit from prisons. The rich probably benefit more from a (somewhat) educated population than even the rest of us do. (Otherwise they'd move to Ethiopia or something.)
So, there's a strong case that covers some non-users of the public education system, like people with no children. However, when a parent decides not to put their child in the public system, they reduce the load on that system. It seems inefficient to allocate the same resources to a system regardless of how many children it handles. Why shouldn't a parent who takes their kids out also get to take their money out? They thereby reduce both sides of the income/expense equation for the public schools, so it's no-lose.
Of course, by that argument "rich" people shouldn't get back all the money they put into the system if they decide not to put their kids in it, because the system is intended to redistribute wealth to poor people. Which is why most voucher proposals are "flat" in that everyone gets a voucher for the same amount, no matter how much taxes they pay. I personally think it would be better to just let private education be tax deductible (only religious education?!), but the voucher people don't go that far.
The voucher system seems like an excellent compromise. It introduces a limited form of competition to the primary education system, and everywhere it's been tried it works -- in the sense that the children in the voucher system get far better education than they did before. Teachers' unions never like it, but even the public schools thrive once they're put into a competitive situation and have to perform in order to get funding. Who better to make decisions with this money than the parents?
Completely agree that religious schools should not be a special case, provide tax exemption to all or none.
I think in England almost every fee school is registered as a charity, and thus avoid tax.
When I was at school the big concept was comprehensive education where selection by ability was frowned upon... if the alternative is selection by parents' wealth, then I say selection by ability is infinitely better.
The big advantage to expensive schools though isn't really that the education is any better, it's that the socializing is more profitable. Ivy Leaguers don't make fortunes because of what they learn at those schools, but because of who they meet. There's no reasonable way to prevent the wealthy from congregating together, whether it's at school or elsewhere. For-profit universities seem to balance the quality/profit dichotomy pretty well. ("Top" schools maybe less well than others!)