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Why Don't Taxpayers Maximize their Tax-Based Student Aid? Salience and Inertia in Program Selection

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  • Turner Nicholas

    (Office of Tax Analysis, US Treasury)

Abstract

Tax-based federal student aid is designed to increase postsecondary attendance and ease the financial burden of higher education enrollment by offering students and their families a menu of tax incentives. However, many taxpayers who are eligible for more than one tax-based aid program, and who are limited to one program per student each year, fail to select the single program that offers the largest reduction in taxes. Analyzing a panel dataset of individual income tax returns, I find that in roughly one out of four returns taxpayers and paid preparers fail to select the tax-minimizing tax-based aid program. I find evidence that greater salience of federal tax effects, and inertia in program selection, leads some taxpayers and paid preparers to make non-tax-minimizing selections. Streamlining the set of tax-based aid programs into a single tax incentive is likely to be a more effective way of lowering the costs of postsecondary attendance for students and their families.

Suggested Citation

  • Turner Nicholas, 2011. "Why Don't Taxpayers Maximize their Tax-Based Student Aid? Salience and Inertia in Program Selection," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-24, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:11:y:2011:i:1:n:75
    DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.2896
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Elsayed, Mahmoud A.A., 2016. "The Impact of Education Tax Benefits on College Completion," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 16-30.
    2. Turner, Nicholas, 2012. "Who benefits from student aid? The economic incidence of tax-based federal student aid," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 463-481.
    3. Dayanand S. Manoli & Nicholas Turner, 2014. "Cash-on-Hand & College Enrollment: Evidence from Population Tax Data and Policy Nonlinearities," NBER Working Papers 19836, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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