Harry Reid (D-NV), United States Senator from Nevada and Majority Leader of the United States Senate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whew, S corporation shareholders… You dodged a bullet last week when the bill to raise your taxes was voted down.

You mean you didn’t know there was such a bill? Of course you didn’t. That’s because Congress did what it does best: it snuck a controversial provision to boost taxes on certain S corporation shareholders into the Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012 (S.B. 2343).

Despite the fact that the text of the bill noted “This Act may be cited as the ‘Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012′ and that the purpose of the bill is stated as “A BILL [t]o amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to extend the reduced interest rate for Federal Direct Stafford Loans, and for other purposes,” the student loan portion of the bill is exactly three lines.

The rest of the bill focuses on S corporations. And by rest, I mean 1,361 words in the 1,571 word bill (or roughly 87%) addressed the taxation of S corporations.

The thrust of the bill – and stop me if you’ve heard this before – is to tax small service-based businesses by imposing a payroll tax on certain shareholders. Specifically, the tax is targeted at certain shareholders in the fields of “health, law, lobbying, engineering, architecture, accounting, actuarial science, performing arts, consulting, athletics, investment advice or management, or brokerage services.” So, professional services.

And only small businesses. Really small businesses. The tax is targeted at those businesses “if 75 percent or more of the gross income of such business is attributable to service of 3 or fewer shareholders of such corporation.” It hits shareholders whose modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is $250,000 or more for married taxpayers and $200,000 or more for individual taxpayers (keep in mind that S corporations are pass through so that the paper “profit” of the business is passed through to the taxpayers whether or not they actually receive the money).

To be clear, the limit would mean that bigger businesses – those with lots and lots of professionals who are shareholders – would be exempt from the increase. So if KPMG were an S corp? Exempt. Your local CPA? Not exempt. JPMorgan? Exempt. Your neighborhood broker? Not exempt.

Yes, it’s the same “let’s kill small businesses” language that was snuck into the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010. It was eventually pulled from that bill but we figured we’d see it again. And we did. Surreptitiously snuck into a feel good bill – because voting against caps for student loan interest is bad for votes, right?

Thankfully, some in Congress were able to sort through the muck. The roll call for the vote (you can see it here) was mostly along party lines with a 52-45 vote (the two abstentions were Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)) with no Republican voting in favor and just one Democrat voting no (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)); the latter is even more perplexing since Reid apparently introduced the S corporation provision into the bill. The two Independents in the Senate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT), sided with the Democrats in voting yes.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended the vote, noting that the Republican party was not in favor of a student loan interest rate increase but did not support a boost in taxes for small businesses. That bit didn’t get much play before – even from folks like me (with apologies to Sen. McConnell).

Expect to see this S corporation vote again, likely hidden in some other vote-getting measure. Like the “We Don’t Like People Who Kick Puppies” bill. It sounds so much better than the real title, the “Death to Small S Corporations and Your Neighborhood Businesses” bill.

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“I was wondering if it was true…seems a little far-fetched to me.”

I checked it out and dismissed it as much ado about nothing.

But then I saw it on Twitter.

And I saw it on Facebook.

And I realized that the video had gone viral as taxpayer outrage mounted.

But folks are mad about the wrong thing.

This is not a loophole. It’s tax fraud. Those are two totally different things. And Channel 13 knows it.

A loophole is an ambiguity. There’s nothing ambiguous about what’s going on here: this kind of fraud simply isn’t allowable under the Tax Code. The credit that the report refers to is the Additional Tax Credit and it’s claimed on a federal form 8812 (form downloads as a pdf). The credit is for certain taxpayers who get less than the full amount of the child tax credit – it is not some kind of loophole for undocumented workers to use to beef up their refunds. The rules for qualifying children still apply and it’s very clear that the credit is restricted to those children who are classified as “a U.S. citizen, a U.S. national, or a U.S. resident alien.”

Nonresident aliens – meaning those living abroad like those cited in the news piece – don’t qualify. And the scenarios that were noted in the piece? Those instances are used as the example of what doesn’t count in the IRS Publication on child tax credits:

Example. Your 10-year-old nephew lives in Mexico and qualifies as your dependent. Because he is not a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or U.S. resident alien, he is not a qualifying child for the child tax credit.

It makes an exciting story and a sensational headline, right? But those reporters are toying with you. They’re trying to make you think that this is a massive scheme only being committed by gardeners and dishwashers. But they’re wrong. This kind of fraud isn’t restricted to illegal aliens or undocumented workers. This kind of fraud is happening right here, stateside, by U.S. residents and U.S. citizens. The IRS has been warning folks away from scams and schemes for years. And yet, taxpayers still bite at the chance to illegally boost refunds by padding deductions and claiming bogus credits.

So who’s to blame? Well, clearly those folks who are claiming fraudulent refunds. And those tax professionals who are helping them perpetuate tax fraud.

But I would suggest that perhaps you and I should shoulder a bit of the blame, too. There is immense pressure on IRS to get refunds to taxpayers almost instantaneously. And whenever IRS wants to slow the process down to screen for fraud, taxpayers scream. And so, the IRS kicks out refunds as fast as they can and try to figure it out later.

And how’s that working out for them? In 2009, the IRS announced that it was investigating more than 100,000 “doubtful claims” related to the first time homebuyer’s credit, totaling about $800 million in potentially false credit. Prisoners have been looting the IRS for years and years by claiming fake refunds. And we’ve all heard the stories and read the news about taxpayers who claim improper expenses, lie about child tax credits or say that they went to college when they didn’t. Where’s the outrage about all of that fraud?

There is some screening. This year, the IRS has reported that as of March 9, 2012, they had stopped 215,000 questionable returns with $1.15 billion in claimed refunds. But even as taxpayers complained that the IRS was too slow to issue refunds, I couldn’t help but think about how much fraud didn’t get stopped.

When it comes to identity theft, the numbers are even bigger. J. Russell George, head of TIGTA, told a congressional hearing last week that up to $26 billion could be refunded to identity thieves in the next five years. Clearly, there needs to be some reform: a better system in place for checking Social Security numbers and Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) would be a start.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting that we give anyone a pass on tax fraud. Undocumented workers should be targeted as much as the next guy. But if we focus on buzz words like “loophole” (which it’s not) or pretend that this fraud is somehow much different than other fraud because of our prejudices about who is committing the fraud, it takes away from the much, much bigger problem of screening and enforcement.

How about we collectively agree that tax fraud is bad and that it needs to stop? And how about we tell Congress to give IRS the resources to stop it?

But the drama? The suggestion that bad behavior is somehow restricted to a certain group of people? That we can do without. It’s getting us nowhere.

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NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 08: A trader (R) watches a stock ticker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange minutes before the closing bell on August 8, 2011 in New York City. The Dow finished down more than 600 points after Standard and Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Admit it. For weeks now, you’ve been dropping the terms “IPO” and “going public” and “stock options” in water cooler conversation and at cocktail parties and you don’t really know what they mean. Or how they make people rich. Or why it matters to you.

And it’s totally Facebook’s fault. As you know, Facebook is “going public” any day now and those “stock options” are going to make folks like Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin ever more rich. As much as the whole world wants to pretend that we really don’t like those guys and we really hate Facebook (remarkable since 900 million of us are actually on Facebook), you can’t get away from the news.

So here’s what you need to know to feel smart.

An IPO is shorthand for initial public offering. It is exactly what it sounds like: the first sale of stock by a company to the general public, hence the clever shorthand “going public.” In most instances, an IPO is used to raise capital so that the company can get bigger. I’m not sure how much bigger Facebook can get but the offering is expected to raise as much as $14 billion, valuing the total compant (depending on final offering price) at anywhere from “$77 billion to $96 billion.”

If you buy a share of a public company, the tax consequences are pretty straightforward. The price that you pay for a share of stock is generally your basis in the stock. Adjustments to basis happen when stocks split, merge or spin off – or through dividend reimbursements (for more on basis, see this prior post). When stocks are sold, there is a gain or loss between the selling price and the basis. The gain is considered capital gain and is taxed at rates between 0% and 35% for 2012, depending on your federal income tax bracket and the length of time that you held the stock (the rates are scheduled to change to between 8% and 39.6% in 2013). Capital losses reduce your capital gains.

But what if you don’t buy that stock on the market? What if you are given the right to buy the stock as a form of compensation? That right is called a stock option. Often, the right is to buy a share of stock at an agreed upon price that is less than fair market value of the stock.

There are usually two main reasons why a company would issue stock options:

1. It’s cheap. It’s not the same as paying out cash so the company is able to give you the right to future growth in the company (assuming all goes well) without cleaning out their own accounts; and/or
2. Stock options can be controlled. Companies can impose restrictions on transfers or schedule when the options “vest” (meaning when the shares are eligible to be purchased) based on length of time or other behaviors. This allows companies to lock in loyalty (sort of) to the company.

These reasons – lack of cash and urge to control – are why many employee stock options are initially offered to management, as part of an executive compensation package. As the company grows, options may also be offered to all employees who have worked at the company for a certain period of time.

There are two types of stock options: statutory stock options and nonstatutory stock options. Statutory stock options are the kind that you and I are most familiar with and are those granted as part of an incentive stock option (ISO) plan or as part of an employee stock purchase (ESP) plan. Nonstatutory stock options are the rest – or statutory stock options that are granted to non-employees (you can’t do that and retain the favorable tax treatment).

If you receive a statutory stock option, you generally don’t have any immediate tax consequences upon the grant or the exercise of the option (you exercise the option by buying a share of stock). You may, however, be subject to Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) upon the exercise of an ISO – it can be one of those dreaded AMT triggers. The real tax consequences for most taxpayers, however, occurs when you sell the stock. At that point, you report the gain or loss just like you would by selling a share of Coca-Cola or General Electric.

If you receive a nonstatutory stock option, you might have tax consequences when you receive the option: it depends on whether the fair market value of the option can be readily determined. For some options (those that are traded on a market), that’s easy. But for newly established companies – or those that are just taking off – it can be nearly impossible to determine the fair market value of the option which is exactly what makes it so appealing. When that’s the case, there is no taxable event upon the grant of the option. There is, however, the realization of income when the option is exercised and again when the stock is eventually sold; it’s treated just like regular old stock at that time.

So this morning, bright and early, I headed over the site and got this message:

And again.

And again.

The system is down… Of course it is.

The site is never dependable, something that I’ve been complaining about on behalf of clients and other non-profit organizations since 2010.

If the IRS is going to require that small non-profit organizations file electronically, don’t you think there should be some sort of system to make sure, er, that the site actually works?

It’s worth noting that the site (which as I’ve pointed out before, looks like a high school computer project) is not maintained by IRS. It is maintained by The Urban Institute which has as its mission:

the Urban Institute gathers data, conducts research, evaluates programs, offers technical assistance overseas, and educates Americans on social and economic issues — to foster sound public policy and effective government.

I happen to be a fan of much of what the Urban Institute does… but tech savvy? Not so much.

Filing the e-postcard is supposed to be free (for organizations which receive less than $100,000 annually) and easy. It’s free, true, but the easy is disputable. My fellow tax pros – and officers from nonprofit organizations – have contacted me over the past two years complaining about all kinds of errors and glitches filing the form 990-N. Most of the the complaints have been about the speed of the site (sloooooow) or not being able to log on. But some of the errors were quite serious: the system spit out the wrong fiscal year or did not recognize the organization at all. Even worse? In those cases, the IRS has not been able to fix the problems directly because their records (as updated by the Urban Institute) do not reflect the proper filing status. It’s an inter-agency problem and one that has yet to be resolved.

I realize that this new system has only been up for a couple of years. For the IRS, that’s nothing. But in today’s tech world – when Apple can introduce new operating systems practically overnight and Droid can offer up new apps nearly instantaneously – I can’t understand two years’ worth of error messages. Meanwhile, those that are paying the price for these errors are those that can afford to do it the least: non-profit organizations with less than $100,000 in donations. The irony here would be delicious if not so tragic.

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You see, when I was a kid, all of my friends were in pageants. Yes, like beauty pageants. It was the rural South. I was a girl. I owned foam rollers. It was destiny.

The part that wasn’t quite destiny was the fact that we were poor. That meant that my parents had not paid for singing lessons or tap lessons. I didn’t have a pageant coach. And I didn’t have a store-bought dress. But I wanted to do it. And my mom had this wonderful way of making me think that I could do anything that I wanted. So she signed me up. And she made me a party dress. And I sang my little heart out to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – with a lisp (did I mention that I didn’t have a speech coach either?).

I won second runner-up which is a pretty good story in itself.

But the better part is that years later, we found my mom’s notes from the day that I announced that I wanted to be in the pageant. She had written:

Kelly came home from school today and announced she will be in a pageant. I do not know what she will do as she has no talent.

As it turned out, my mom was right. I don’t sing. I don’t dance. But my mom never would have told me so. She always let me try. And I have always loved that about her.

This Mother’s Day is a little bit harder than usual. If you read the blog, you know that my mom had heart surgery earlier in the year. It was tough on her – and she’s nothing if not a fighter – but it hasn’t been easy. And today, she is back in the hospital with bleeding on her brain. She is expected to recover but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I wasn’t worried.

Every year on Mother’s Day, I read with interest all of the posts and articles that try to quantify the worth of a mother by job descriptions. In 2007, I wrote a response to an article about measuring worth based on the value of performing “motherly” tasks (the piece references those 2007 figures – the 2012 values can be found here). Every year I post it in its entirety. This year, however, I’m reminded more than ever that you can’t put a price on moms. That said, the tax geek in me finds the policy issues fascinating so I hope you enjoy it.

(And if you have a spare moment, I hope you’ll read this one, too: the nine things I’ve learned about tax from my mom. I wrote it when she was in the hospital earlier this year.)

___________________________________

Years ago, in my Tax Policy class, we had a discussion about the value of intangible labor. The discussion was whether it was appropriate to quantify (and therefore, tax) the value of work brought into a home.

Sound “out there”? Not really. Salary.com basically does the same thing (minus the taxing part) every year as part of its efforts to determine the “worth” of the work of a stay at home mom. This year, they’ve determined that the predicted annual salary of a stay at home mom, if paid out, would be $138,095. Working moms are valued at $85,939, in addition to the mother’s “professional” salary.

I have been highly critical of the report in the past, and am again. And it’s not because I don’t think being a mother is hard work – as the mother of three small children, I heartily agree that there are challenges that we face every day that would make grown men cry.

But the point of the article is to assign a dollar value per hour to each of the tasks that a mom does during the day. I assume that quantifying it by breaking the “duties” into discreet tasks is meant to add some sense of value to what it is that we do every day. But I think using terms like “CEO”, “computer operator” and “psychologist” both devalue and trivialize what it is that we mothers do.

When I get paid as an attorney, my worth is based on a number which takes into consideration my level of education, my level of experience and the hours that I work. My salary is not based on how many hours I do my own typing, answer my own phone or counsel my staff on issues. In fact, I don’t know of any job that is compensated based on individual job activities. Additionally, there are no adjustments for sick days, vacation days and other “perks” that employees receive but mothers do not. So, realistically, I think the study falls flat.

Salary.com also references being a stay at home mother as a “Dream Job”, another euphemism that I think cheapens the role of mother. “Dream Jobs” are usually those jobs which are viewed as cushy, those that pay a great deal or carry considerable clout or prestige. Being a mother doesn’t do that. There’s no “pay” and arguably, the amount of clout and prestige that we assign to motherhood as a job, is woeful.

Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I think that being a mother, whether a stay at home mother or a working mother, is an enormous job. I do believe that the contributions of mothers to society are routinely ignored and/or undervalued. But attempting to classify the job of being a mom into artful roles doesn’t change that – and I would argue that it makes it worse. Why can’t we just say that being a mom, in and of itself, is important? Why do we feel the need to boost our image by comparing ourselves with CEOs? Why do we need to attach an hourly rate to our daily activities to give validation to what it is that we do?

What the author of that article is really attempting to do (my cynical views aside) is, I hope, craft a discussion about human capital, which was detailed by salary.com last year. Human capital can be defined in a number of ways, but I like Gary Becker’s definition best:

…because people cannot be separated from their knowledge, skills, health, or values in the way they can be separated from their financial and physical assets.

In other words, there are some things that you just can’t put a price on. I think that the benefits of mothering qualify.

Yes, you can always pay someone to do your laundry, to clean your house, to do all of those things that salary.com has defined as the roles of a mother. But if it were that simple, mothers would be defined by those things alone. Talking to your children, playing with your children, comforting your children – these things can’t actually be valued in terms of dollars. They are priceless.

And this idea of human capital necessarily attaches itself to tax issues. There are folks who advocate for the “marriage penalty” because they claim that the services of a wife and mother add tangible value to a family and are therefore, taxable. No, those folks are not on hallucinogens. The idea is that if you have to outsource services such as cleaning, cooking and child care (i.e. traditional women’s roles), then your overall net income is lower. If you believe that (and it is theoretically true), the converse should also make sense, right? The theoretical “net income” of a married couple should be higher because those duties that might be outsourced otherwise probably aren’t – this is especially true if the mother is a stays at home. Confused?

Let’s think back to those studies. Salary.com believes that a stay at home mom would add almost $140k of “salary” to a family if a mom received such a paycheck. In other words, salary.com is saying that a family receives the “benefit” of nearly $140k in services that a single person would have to pay for. And in the case of the working mom, salary.com is similarly arguing that a family receives the “benefit” of an additional $85k in services. If this is, in fact, true, that mothers add a quantifiable value, why not tax it?

The funny thing is, on some level, we actually reward those families who choose not to embrace this concept – for whatever reason (religion, necessity, moral values). If you choose to place your child care outside of the home, you can get a tax break. You can receive similar “breaks” for outsourcing other kinds of services, depending on what they are. Would it make sense from a tax policy perspective to allow us to tax those services if performed by a mom, but still allow a deduction?

Yeah, it’s a little over the top. But you see where I’m headed here. I don’t like attempts to quantify a mother’s job because I think it’s missing the bigger picture. Moms are a valuable and irremovable piece of our greater society. It would be impossible to actually define and quantify the value that moms add to our lives – and dads, too. There are some things, as MasterCard points out, that money just can’t buy.

So, I say ignore those silly studies. Don’t think about your mother’s worth in terms of dollars. Just give her a big hug and say “Thanks!”

Happy Mother’s Day!

(Psst… An especially wonderful Mother’s Day to my own mom, who taught me the importance of love, respect and tolerance. Most importantly, my mom taught me that there is a bigger world out there and encouraged me to go find it, even though it took me away from home. I love you, Mom!)

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1948 style US Route 990 highway marker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For years, most small tax-exempt organizations were exempt from filing requirements with IRS. This all changed a few years back when The Pension Protection Act of 2006 made it mandatory for tax-exempt organizations to file an annual information return or notice with the IRS regardless of how much (or little) income the organization receives. The new rule was effective beginning in calendar year 2007. The new rule was pretty much ignored beginning that same year.

To “encourage” compliance, the rule also imposed an automatic loss of tax-exempt status for tax-exempt organizations which failed to file returns for three consecutive year. The result was a bit of a bloodletting in 2010, which marked the third year after the rule took effect.

The IRS scrambled a bit to help out tax-exempts which hadn’t filed on time, offering extensions and making a real effort to get the word out. Tens of thousands of charities had not complied by the ever important 2010 deadline, so the IRS ramped up notices and the like.

And then… crickets.

After a flurry of activity, many tax-exempts have forgotten about the forms and are now staring down the possibility of loss of status for filing to remain compliant with respect to reporting.

I know, I know. You can’t baby taxpayers.

But I’ve represented a lot of tax-exempt organizations. And it’s tough to stay compliant especially with very small organizations that don’t have a budget for tax pros and especially with organizations in transition (meaning, specifically, those run by volunteers who may rotate through a treasurer every couple of years).

It’s important to remember that loss of tax-exempt status can spell disaster for some organizations: not only does it mean that the organization must file income tax returns and pay tax but perhaps more importantly, it means that donors cannot take tax deductions for contributions. The ability to claim a deduction is often the motivation for individuals to make a charitable donation; without it, many potential donors may go elsewhere (or not give at all). That means it’s crucial to stay compliant.

For most tax-exempt organizations, the key date is May 15. That’s the filing deadline this year for calendar year tax-exempt organizations (otherwise, it’s the 15th day of the fifth month following the close of the tax year).

Small tax-exempt organizations whose annual gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less for 2011 are required to electronically submit federal form 990-N, also known as the e-Postcard, unless they choose to file a complete Form 990 or Form 990-EZ instead (there’s nothing that says you can’t file the longer returns if you want to).

- The Social Network

So what does that make two billion dollars? Apparently, a pretty good reason to give up your citizenship.

Brazilian-born Eduardo Saverin, who helped co-found the mega-successful social networking site Facebook in 2004 has called it quits in the U.S. The 30 year old Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship in advance of the May 2012 initial public offering (IPO) for Facebook. The IPO is expected to boost Saverin’s already staggering net worth, which is already estimated at $2 billion, putting him solidly at #634 on the most recent Forbes List of Billionaires.

The move is not altogether surprising. Saverin was neither born in the U.S. nor is he a resident. Saverin was born in Brazil and moved to the U.S. as a young boy when his wealthy father discovered that Saverin’s name was on a list of potential kidnapping victims. Saverin eventually landed at Harvard, where he met Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg realized that Saverin’s wealth could help bankroll his start-up and eventually, Saverin became Facebook’s first investor.

Saverin’s involvement in Facebook was actually fairly minimal beyond putting up the dollars. But those dollars were invaluable: without them, Zuckerberg would not have been able to keep his servers going. When the rest of Facebook’s team moved west, Saverin stayed put. Zuckerberg tried to edge Saverin out of the company but Saverin sued and the resulting settlement gave him a stake in the company.

Over the years, Saverin has divested himself of much of his Facebook holdings. He has generally eschewed the spotlight (that Zuckerberg appears to relish) and two years ago, moved to Singapore where he reportedly owns a luxury penthouse.

In 2011, Saverin moved to renounce his U.S. citizenship, joining the ranks of Princess Grace of Monaco, Queen Noor, Jet Li, Terry Gilliam and Andreas Papandreou (now the Prime Minister of Greece).

Saverin’s notice of renunciation was published in the April 30, 2012, edition of the Federal Register along with more than 400 other people who are no longer U.S. citizens. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, signed into law in 1996 under President Clinton, each year the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is required to publish the names of persons who are no longer U.S. citizens.

But why IRS? Why not the INS, BCIS, USCIS (the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services or whatever we’re calling it these days)?

Taxes, of course. While there may be legitimate non-tax reasons for renouncing U.S. citizenship, the majority of those Americans who give up citizenship these days do so for tax reasons.

Of course, fleeing the country isn’t the silver bullet that you might expect to avoid reporting and paying taxes. Americans who expatriate after 2008 are still subject to certain reporting and tax requirements under our tax laws. Those laws apply if any of certain criteria are met. In Saverin’s case, he would be subject to the expatriation tax because his net worth is $2 million or more on the date he expatriated (one of the three criteria than can make you subject to the tax).

The expatriation laws are a bit tricky. The basic rule is that, for purposes of the tax, any assets that you leave the country with are treated as though you had sold them on the date before you leave. Any gain which would have occurred had you actually sold those assets are subject to tax (with some exceptions).

So Saverin doesn’t get a free pass. His assets are still subject to tax. Lucky for Saverin, however, the value of his assets pre-IPO are still considerably less than the value of his assets post-IPO. And by lucky, I mean absolutely planned.

A crowd of college students at the 2007 Pittsburgh University Commencement. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday was Career Day at my kids’ school. So, around 9:00 a.m., I found myself standing in front of a room full of kids, touting the virtues of staying in school. I recited the saga of being the first in my family to go to college. I talked about how I loved what I do and how I couldn’t have done it without an education.

Here’s what I left out. I didn’t tell that I borrowed so much money that my mom cried. I didn’t say that I owe more in student loans than I owe on my home. I didn’t go on about how deeply flawed – and in some instances, dirty – the administration of student loans can be.

And I didn’t tell them that our collective national student debt passed one trillion dollars this year.

Congress is currently debating whether to allow existing rates on student loans to be increased. They’ve already made it harder to default or discharge student loans in a bankruptcy than other forms of personal debt, making it easier to be irresponsible at Macy’s than it is to pay off your student loan obligations.

In short, they’re making it harder for the middle class to go to college.

But we’re making it easier to buy a house.

Here’s the thing. If you discount the alternative minimum tax (AMT), there are practically no restrictions on the amount of deductions you can take for buying a home. Under the rules, if you itemize you can deduct the interest you pay on the loan for your home (or homes) up to $1,100,000 (including home acquisition and home equity debts). There are no caps or limits on income or filing status (again, subject to AMT restrictions).

But your investment in education? That’s significantly limited.

You may not claim student loan interest if your income level exceeds $150,000 for married couples filing jointly or $75,000 for individual taxpayers. Additionally, the amount of your student loan interest deduction is capped at $2,500. Considering that the average student loan debt load (not including graduate loan debt) is nearly $30,000. Graduate and professional students have debt typically ranging from $30,000 to $120,000. With interest rates for many federal loans at between 7.8% and 8.5% (depending on the kind of loan), the maximum interest deduction available taps at the very bottom of what most students pay. It’s not uncommon for those with graduate and professional degrees to pay four to five times the allowable deductible interest payments.

Can you imagine what the housing market would look like if we capped interest deductions at $2,500? Where are our priorities?

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - SEPTEMBER 25: Cliff Avril #92 of the Detroit Lions attempts a sack as Donovan McNabb #5 of the Minnesota Vikings completes a pass to Visanthe Shiancoe #81 of the Minnesota Vikings for a touchdown in the second quarter on September 25, 2011 at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Last night, the Minnesota House voted 73-58 to approve a public-private venture to build a new football stadium. The move happened after lawmakers adjusted the private contribution piece to a higher number, requiring the team’s owners to kick in more of their own funds and lessening the burden on taxpayers in the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis.

So, now it’s full steam ahead to the Senate, right?

Not exactly. The deal that passed the House boosted the team’s contribution by $105 million to $532 million, representing over half of the cost. The state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis would kick in the rest. However, the Star Tribune is reporting that a spokesperson from the team has termed the deal “not workable.” The team’s owners want to see their contribution drop. That’s not likely to happen.

Republicans in the Senate are balking at the cost of the subsidy to the public, noting that these are difficult economic times. They warned their colleagues in the legislature to not be blinded by flashes of purple and gold and to think about the cost to taxpayers.

The debate in the Senate is expected to go on all day.

For more on this story – including the history behind the push for the new stadium – check out my prior post.

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MINNEAPOLIS - NOVEMBER 22: Sidney Rice #18 of the Minnesota Vikings (centre) celebrates his touchdown with teammates Bernard Berrian #87 and Visanthe Shiancoe #81 after his touchdown against the Seattle Seahawks at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome on November 22, 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The 2012 NFL season is set to open in 121 days (not that I’m counting or anything). The game opener will be a showdown between my own Philadelphia Eagles rivals: the defending Super Bowl XLVI champion New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. I think we know how this one is going to end already.

It promises to be an interesting season. Peyton Manning will be back but not in a Colts uniform. Sean Payton won’t be back, a victim of the Bounty Scandal. Andrew Luck will make his much anticipated debut, looking like a sure thing, thanks in part to a crazy easy schedule in the first part of the season. LaDainian Tomlinson is sidelining himself, claiming that he’s “95% retired.” And the Redskins might actually have a chance of winning a game or two with RG3 at the helm.

So what could possibly be bigger news than those items?

The possible disappearance of the Minnesota Vikings.

The Vikings have been an NFL team since 1961. They’ve never had a name change and they’ve never called any place other than Minnesota home. Even their home fields have been relatively constant: in fifty years, they’ve only called two stadiums home. For the first twenty years of their existence, they played at Metropolitan Stadium. They switched stadiums thirty years ago and have played at the Mall of America Field at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome since 1982. This year, however, that might change. While the Vikings will play out the 2012 season at the Metrodome, their lease is up. And while the team hasn’t overtly threatened to go, it is very likely that they will move on. But – and it’s a big but – there’s a chance they’ll stay if they get what they want most: a shiny new stadium.

While the Metrodome isn’t collapsing, it is showing its age. During the 2010 season, the Vikings had to pick up and move to (shudder) Detroit to play the Giants after the stadium’s dome was damaged following a massive winter storm that dropped nearly a foot and a half of snow in Minneapolis. The Vikings then played the Bears at the University of Minnesota. Suddenly a home field advantage wasn’t quite so homey.

The Metrodome was eventually repaired and back in business for the 2011 season. But memories of the stadium’s troubles linger. And, new stadiums are all the rage now. The Giants and Jets got a new one in 2010; Dallas kicked off in a new stadium in 2009 and Indianapolis now plays ball in the house that Manning built in 2008.

That makes a stadium built in 1982 practically ancient. And in a league where ticket sales matter, a stadium that fits 20,000 fewer folks than those being built today raises eyebrows and concerns.

The solution? Build a new stadium, of course. Even better, pay for part of it with public money. Win-win for everyone, right?

Maybe not. Later tonight, the Minnesota House will debate a measure that would kick in taxpayer dollars to build a nearly $1 billion stadium. The current proposal calls for the team to pay close to half ($427 million) of the cost of the project. The state of Minnesota would kick in about 40% ($398 million), relying on gambling revenue and the roughly 15% remainder ($150 million) would be paid for by the City of Minneapolis.

It’s a tough bill to stomach in a tight economy. Proponents, however, claim that the stadium will pay off eventually in tourist dollars and job creation. If the team were to leave, however, that would create a gaping hole in the state’s economy as the dollars trickled elsewhere. Plus, there’s the issue of pride: Minnesotans have been grappling with the idea of losing their beloved team to a place like (said in a whispered tone) Los Angeles.

Despite team loyalty, the issue of whether public dollars should be used to pay for a private venture has created an uneasy dialogue. Most legislators appeared to lean no earlier in the year until NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made an appearance to beg sell the state on the idea. More recently, fans and players alike have showed up to beg encourage the legislature to vote yes, some even setting up tailgates in the state capital (if you’re gonna advocate for a cause, by the way, I totally think this is the way to do it).

The House is expected to debate through the night. Even if they come out of the issue with a yes, it’s not a done deal. The measure will still have to get through the Senate.

One of the points of contention has been quantifying the value of the team to the state. In terms of sheer dollars, the team is not that valuable. Of the 32 NFL teams, the Vikings rank 28th, with an estimated value of $796 million. That puts them just ahead of the Buffalo Bills (who?), St. Louis Rams, Oakland Raiders and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

But in terms of wins, the Vikings are tops. Overall, they’ve had one of the highest winning percentages in the NFL (54%). And following the NFL/AFL merger, the team has made the playoffs an astounding 24 times, the third most in the league. They win games. And people like them. Well, except for Green Bay.

So, what will rule the day? Dollars or team pride?

Likely somewhere in between. I suspect the Vikings will get their stadium. And I suspect that taxpayers will happily – as long as they win – fund it so long as the team kicks in at least half. Despite the grumbling, the measure isn’t likely to fail completely. But a public-private venture looks a lot better promoted next to a championship banner.

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