Student loans

Basis debate; relief to come; underreporting and the gap; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

Thanks to vagaries of the accounting world, Donald Trump’s administration had a chance in the final weeks of the presidential race to cancel more than $200 billion of student loans with no immediate hit to the Department of Education’s massive portfolio. Yet it didn’t do it. Now, perhaps Joe Biden will.

President Joe Biden plans to extend a freeze on federal student-loan repayments until at least the end of September, keeping in place a pandemic measure that’s reduced costs for tens of millions of borrowers.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department are offering a safe harbor to provide relief to taxpayers who borrowed money to attend a nonprofit or for-profit school and had their student loan debts discharged.

French lessons; our tax system, by the numbers; return of the 1099-NEC; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is calling on Congress to allow the Internal Revenue Service to give the Department of Education information on the income of student loan borrowers, warning that student loan applicants are misrepresenting their income and family size to qualify for reduced payment plans.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will propose canceling the nation’s outstanding $1.6 trillion of student debt and offsetting the cost with a tax on Wall Street transactions.

As tuition costs continue to rise and loan debt becomes a growing burden, more students are choosing credentials like the CMA.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a private letter ruling allowing an unnamed employer to make 401(k) contributions on behalf of employees who are repaying their student loans.

The Internal Revenue Service will be bringing back its IRS Data Retrieval Tool on October 1 for people applying for federal student aid.