Misinformation
SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars is misinforming people in the post on Montgomery county, Virginia election officials warning students:
It reads, in part: “The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.”
The information on the taxes can vary, but is often true depending on the way taxes are filed. You need to consult your parents before you do it.
You have to be a resident to vote anywhere. We have a lot of retired people down here who have two residences, but their primary residence depends on where they vote, and that determines whether or not they are eligible for the “homestead property tax exemption” in Florida. If you register to vote in two states at the same time it is fraud in both states.
The state of residence also affects your tuition if you are attending a public university, which is one of the reasons that students might want to register in the state where they go to school, because normally after their current year they become eligible for in-state tuition which is lower than out-of-state tuition. The effect it will have on any scholarships will depend on the rules for that scholarship.
I was in involved with this through a couple of friends who were sending their firstborn to a public university in another state. The way the numbers worked out in this particular case [every case is different] they made out much better by having the child establish himself as a resident of the university. The money they lost when they gave up the tax deduction was minimal compared to the drop in tuition, and as an individual he qualified for financial aid that wasn’t available as their dependent.
Changing your state of residency has consequences. Claiming it doesn’t, or that it is a “GOP trick” is ignorant. The consequences tend to be individualized, so students need to check with their parents and read the rules for any scholarships.
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State of residency does not necessarily have anything to do with in-state tuition or whether you’re allowed as a dependent on your mother/father’s income tax, Bryan. Basically, when I was in Texas, here’s how the rules worked:
1. You could declare that Texas was your state of residence and register your car and get your driver’s license and register to vote in Texas with proof of residence (a cancelled rent check, a utility bill, a piece of mail addressed to you at a Texas address, or some combination of these).
2. *IF* you were a full time student, you were *STILL* a dependent on your mother/father’s federal income tax if you were under age 24. Dependency was/is completely independent of where the student actually resides, it is a matter of who is financially responsible for your care, and it is held that if you are a full-time student in college under age 24, that is still your parents.
3. Even *IF* you were a Texas resident insofar as the DMV and Registrar of Voters were concerned, you *STILL* paid out-of-state tuition as long as you were still listed as a dependent on your mother/father’s federal income tax and they themselves were not Texas residents.
4. Even *IF* you’re no longer a dependent on your mother/father’s federal income tax because you are age 24 or above, you still did not qualify for in-state tuition unless either a) you had lived in Texas for at least a year prior to enrolling for college, or b) you are employed full-time by a Texas employer, or c) you can otherwise offer proof that you intend to stay in Texas permanently (e.g., if the courses you are taking are required for your employment with a Texas employer, such as teacher certification courses that your school district is requiring you to take in order to obtain Texas teacher certification prior to the start of your employment with them), with the understanding that even if you qualify for b) or c) you will have had to be a Texas resident for at least a year before you qualify for in-state tuition.
In short, dependency, in-state vs. out-of-state tuition, and residency are three different topics, which are only loosely related. Having had to negotiate that whole mess in the past, I find the statement about “residency” having income tax repercussions for your parents to be grossly inaccurate and not at all reflective of the reality of the situation, which is that dependency has no (zero) relationship to residency for full-time students under age 24. I was a resident of Texas with a Texas driver’s license and an automobile registered in the State of Texas and was registered to vote in Texas while being a dependent of parents in Louisiana while paying out-of-state tuition at the University of Houston. All of this was legal and aboveboard and in full compliance with the laws of Texas, Louisiana, and the United States of America.
The tax rules are not that clear cut anymore and that’s why the registrar said check with the tax preparer, and I recommended checking with parents. It can be structured either way based on a number of things. As I said, my friends changed it, as it was beneficial to their situation.
Things that were once automatic and assumed aren’t anymore, and the income levels at which things kick in have also changed. I had two scholarships that were based on my being a resident of New York state, so I voted absentee from New York the entire time I was in the service and had a New York driver’s license.
There was a time when all interest was deductible, but no longer. The tax laws change every year. The definition of a dependent child has changed.
The majority of financial aid doesn’t care, but some awards do. You definitely have to get a new driver’s license and vehicle registration in 30 days.
The point is, the situation is not cut and dried, and people should find out before they do something that could have major effects on their life.
BadTux is correct. This is a voter suppression campaign, pure and simple. Registering to vote does not affect eligibility to be claimed as a dependent. Period.
“By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional.” — This is a lie.
No, you bloody fool, it is a change in the IRS code that is outlined in a separate post called “Student Residential Status” with a link to the IRS announcement that requires you to have your parents’ address as your permanent residence for the majority of the year to be considered a dependent for tax purposes, and it is irresponsible for those doing the registration not to be aware of the change and not to tell people about it.
Is the Obama campaign going to reimburse the students for the losses caused by their ignorance?
I just responded on that post.
I don’t see what the Obama campaign has to do with this at all.
It seems to me that if you have people out there registering voters, you don’t expect them to be trained to be giving tax advice. It’s not appropriate for them to give warnings or anything else about changes in tax laws, but parents claiming their full-time student children as deductions ought to know and advise their children accordingly.
(or as dependents, rather)
It is the Obama campaign that is behind many of the registration drives, and if you are encouraging people to change their residence, you have an obligation to understand the consequences.
The local elections people did, and took the trouble to notify people. What was the reaction from Crooks and Liars and Shakesville – they are trying to steal the election.
The Obama campaign is trying to win an election and register as many voters as they can. Most of the people doing registration are volunteers and are trained to get the forms properly completed, not to be experts on giving tax advice. I don’t agree that the Obama campaign needs to be concerned with this.
When the students find out they are screwed, are they likely to vote? If they do vote, are they likely to vote for the people who screwed them?
I think they are more likely to vote if they are registered to vote than not. And I don’t think that the person giving them a form to register is screwing them. You are responsible for determining your own residency. That’s not the job of some volunteer.
I can confirm that what Badtux wrote was indeed true in the late 1970’s. My housemate/girlfriend at the time was, like me, a grad student at UH, but unlike me, she was “not from Texas” for purposes of determining tuition. Our tuitions differed vastly.
“You are responsible for determining your own residency. That’s not the job of some volunteer.” – Mahakal
Actually, in Harris County, TX, it’s the job of the county voter registrar’s office.
I’ve registered a few people in my day as a volunteer. We were specifically trained to do the following: if someone affirmed that s/he was a U.S. citizen and that the info on the application was true and correct, we were to submit the application promptly (mere days) to the voter registrar, who solely determined that person’s status as a qualified voter. It wasn’t the voter’s job to determine his or her residency. It wasn’t the volunteer’s job to determine residency, either. Only the county voter registrar could do that.
Easy solution…vote by mail. Keep registered at your parental unit’s home…have them send your ballot to where you are going to school.
Here in SB we mail out thousands of ballots to kids across the country and to folks visiting or living outside of the US.
For students, absentee voting is the best solution.
So, Mahakal, are you saying that Governor Palin was right, that community organizers and activists have no responsibility? Try being a person rather than a partisan. This will affect the student adversely and affect their parents. Someone needs to show they care and stop with the “Not My Job” cop out.
In this case, Steve, the voting officials are going above and beyond, but the “progressives” are only looking at scoring an advantage. This is not how you grow a party.
It’s the best solution for all concerned, Jill.
Nice way to twist what I said, Bryan. Campaign volunteers are not expected to be competent to give tax advice to people or generally to be familiar with the internal revenue code. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, it means they aren’t trained and might give wrong advice in any particular case. Even the election officials tell people to consult their tax professional.
And it turns out that the IRS does not agree with your interpretation either.
NY Times:
Advising people to vote absentee rather than registering to vote in person is bad advice if you want to make sure their votes are counted. The US Supreme Court has ruled that students have the right to register at their college addresses, way back in 1979.
It was not nice, nor was it intended to be nice, and you can’t evade the reality that what they volunteers are doing can have a serious adverse effect on people’s taxes and the students’ scholarships.
When you alter someone’s legal residence there are consequences. When all you think about is a possible benefit to you and make no effort to investigate the possible consequences to the person, you are acting in a selfish and reckless manner.
If you are going to work with students, you have an obligation to know about students and their status. I taught at the college level and students live under different rules than the population at large. If you work with students you have to have to learn the rules of their environment.
The elections people in Montgomery County made the effort, but they were bad-mouthed for telling the truth.
I’m more than tired of people refusing to take responsibility for their actions.
what if i registered to vote today at school, but some of the information i put down may have been incorrect. i’m currently 17 and don’t turn 18 until november 21, and on the form i checked the box that said i will be 18 on or before election day. the lady that gave us the form didn’t inform us much on that, she just rushed through everything, and i didn’t really have time to read and think everything over. will this be a problem, or will this end up in a minor fine or something?
Every state has different laws on voting, Scrat, but in general if you contact the local election office, which you should be able to find in the phone book, and tell them that you made a mistake on the form and you don’t attempt to cast a vote, they’ll probably just strike you from the rolls without penalty. Do it quickly, and absolutely don’t go near a ballot box.
If you let it ride and they find out about it, then there could be a problem, and if you attempt to vote, there will definitely be a problem.