The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island is looking to close a $17 million budget deficit on the backs of the city’s college students.
Mayor David Cicilline is proposing a new tax of $300 per year on all undergraduate and graduate students in the city’s four private universities. The flat tax, which he’s calling a “student municipal impact fee,” would — if he gets his way — be paid as part of students’ tuition bills.
Story via the usually-excellent blog The Kept Up Academic Librarian, which unfortunately gave it the pointlessly anti-student headline “You Attend College Here So You May As Well Pay Taxes.”
studentactivism.net 
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May 5, 2009 at 1:08 pm
John
Hmmm. The alternative is to do away with the school tax exempt status on the millions of dollars of property they have gobbled up. Of course, the school would probably just raise the tuition rate for all by, um, maybe $300/yr.
May 5, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Angus Johnston
If the city wants to renegotiate the universities tax-exempt status, or squeeze them for more money, it’s free to do so. But a flat tax on students, with no means testing, is completely regressive.
And if you think that tuition is the universities’ only source of income, or that tuition hikes are their only way of closing a budget gap of their own, you’re wrong.
May 5, 2009 at 1:37 pm
John
I’m sure the endowments the schools have would alleviate the need for a tuition increase. You’re quite right about that.
As for the property taxes, just ask any Providence resident about the school’s “creep” into surrounding neighborhoods resulting in yet another property off the tax roll.
For the record I am with you on the need to renegotiate, but the schools have to come to the table. Perhaps a grandfathering is in order. Current tax-exempt property stays, but any furture purchase that would remove a viable property from the tax rolls, be taxed.