I was talking with some folks at LSU who were working on a proposal to exempt textbooks from sales taxes in Baton Rouge, currently a whopping 9 percent. I’m all in favor of cutting sales taxes, which are generally not progressive; but textbooks are a luxury good because college education is disproportionately undertaken by the offspring of higher-income families. Why subsidize higher-income college students still further?
The elasticity of demand for textbooks is probably quite small; profs assign the same number of textbooks and students used to buy them locally. With more students purchasing textbooks online today, the elasticity is probably much higher locally. There was little excess burden before; and with the expansion of the Internet the burden is still small, since people can escape the tax with minimal effort.
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A reduction in tax isn’t a subsidy. Just like taxes are not “revenue.” As a former poor (monetary) college student I’ll use my right to the anecdote to take issue with the use of the concept of the “average” demographic.
Why are text books, which are largely profit makers for book companies and fraught with many ethical concerns (teacher requiring their books be used) taxed at such a high rate? It is no wonder the used book market has become so creative.
couldn’t you make a reciprocal argument (to your first paragraph, not the second) that by removing costs (even seemingly minor ones) makes college less likely to be reserved for higher income families?
Furthermore, there is a local incentive being created here in that local bookstores probably are losing a lot of college-related business to the internet but might be able to get some of that back (and keep their staff employed and pay taxes on payroll & net company income) by creating a more even playing field with their online competitors. From a legislative perspective this really could accomplish several things at once- marginally increase college attendance (or decrease the debt load of college students – and keep in mind this probably covers vocational & community schools which don’t skew to the higher incomes the way 4-year colleges do) and provide a small measure of support for local employers.
Just because a person is in college doesn’t necessarily mean their parents are paying for anything.
“Textbooks are a luxury good because college education is disproportionately undertaken by the offspring of higher-income families. Why subsidize higher-income college students still further?”
In other words, “Try to discover what kind of people buy a thing: if those people are rich, tax the object. If they’re poor, don’t tax the object.” The reason this way of thinking amuses me so much is that it nearly always has the opposite effect of what academic policy-makers intend.
All this does is put higher education even further out of reach of the financially disadvantaged. This is the problem with statistics: you get a number (e.g., your adjective “disproportionately” is the result of some arithmetical mean I assume) and so instead of discriminating (“hey, let’s try soaking the rich directly through income taxes again!”), we discriminate not at all and soak everyone equally who tries to better their life through education.
There are a few reasons that poor people don’t go to college, one being cost (all reasons need to be addressed, of course), but textbook costs is one of the reasons we can easily fix, don’t you think?
You make an interesting point, but at the same time there are plenty of lower income people who lack the funds to attend college. In that context, finding ways to reduce the costs of attending college seems important if we want to promote higher education across a wider section of the population.
There are some ways that this could be done while targetting those who need it most. Waiving the tax for students getting Pell Grants or financial aid (thus ensuring that they are lower income) is an example. As is providing high quality affordable student housing, and income-qualifying the incoming residents.
Since LSU is a state school aren’t requiring text books themself a tax? As long as schools and teachers themself profit from the textbook they will require higher and high priced book with no more info for the students. why does a calculus book need to be updated the science is 400 years old.
The quality of this column has gone down considerably and this post is no different. This is the last entry I will be reading and I am removing it from reader feed.