<p>she is a chemical engineer. But like others said, tuition and school insurance takes about 10K-15K off that number per year. But it would be still pretty cool bringing home ~45K (not income taxed btw) just for studying.</p>
<p>Stipends are definitely taxed, unfortunately.</p>
<p>Depends on the school, Mollie.</p>
<p>Most of the time you are correct, but sometimes (rarely) stipends are offered tax free.</p>
<p>Speaking of packages offered between private and public schools, I can say private schools may be much higher, but often that is only based on the "tuition" of the school. For instance, the stipend at UNC for Biomed is $25,000, at Duke it is $26,000, but if you factor in the tuition remission at Duke, their package is closer to $65,000...only because if you actually had to pay for tuition there it would be much higher. Either way, you are making close to the same money when it comes to paying bills.</p>
<p>The only people I know getting tax-free stipends are internationals, and that's due to agreements between the US government and their home ones. I know my Thai friend told me he's allowed to have fix years of tax-free income in the US before he's required to pay anything.</p>
<p>Nice Reaver, another reason for me to head down south.</p>
<p>It should not depend on the school whether the stipend is taxed -- the IRS says that all money awarded to a student that's not used for tuition and required educational expenses should be taxed.</p>
<p>From the IRS website, here:</a>
[quote]
Qualified scholarship and fellowship grants are treated as tax–free amounts if all the following conditions are met:</p>
<ol>
<li>You are a candidate for a degree at an educational institution that maintains a regular faculty and curriculum and normally has a regular enrolled body of students in attendance at the place where it carries on its educational activities; and</li>
<li>Amounts you receive as a scholarship or fellowship are used for tuition and fees required for enrollment or attendance at the educational institution, or for books, supplies, and equipment required for courses of instruction.</li>
</ol>
<p>You must include in gross income amounts used for incidental expenses, such as room and board, travel, and optional equipment, as well as amounts received as payments for teaching, research, or other services required as a condition for receiving the scholarship or fellowship grant.
[/quote]
So the tuition and fees package isn't taxed, but the amount used on non-required expenses should be taxed. This is true also for undergraduate scholarships.</p>
<p>Good point, my information was word of mouth from the current students at some of the programs to which I applied. I accede to the IRS website. :)</p>
<p>I was told taxes were not taken out of their stipend checks. Perhaps they then owed taxes at the end of the year (if they actually paid them is another question).</p>
<p>Dunno why I wrote "fix" in my last post, meant five, not five and a half. :p</p>
<p>New_User, that's been my experience here at Caltech. My stipend during the school year didn't have its taxes withheld, but I was required to pay taxes on it. Over this summer, I got moved into some new category and the school is now withholding taxes for me. Kind of annoying since I was automatically taking money out of my paycheck and putting it into CDs such that they'd be up when I have to pay taxes, so I was earning an extra 3-4% on all of my tax money...but oh well.</p>
<p>Right, students in my program have to pay quarterly estimated taxes. (Which is, in my opinion, a huge pain in the rump.)</p>
<p>Stanford's is only for 3 years; that isn't enough to finish a degree in most fields; they also do not guarantee housing for all the years and housing in Palo Alto is very costly.<br>
Harvard and Columbia are among the most generous with graduate support.
Columbia offers a housing subsidy and owns a lot of properties nearby that include apartments for graduate students.</p>
<p>I'm not sure... there might be some confusion about the idea of a stipend. Stipends if part of a fellowship is considered a scholarship gift where it does not require any "services" by the student in return. I didn't need to pay a tax on my stipend off my fellowship and the IRS told me not to since it didn't require me to TA or RA. It was a fellowship which covered tuition + stipend.</p>
<p>The stipend half of my tuition + stipend fellowship w/ no TA/RA responsibilities (NDSEG), on the other hand, is taxed. Bummer :(</p>
<p>I've always liked how money you earn from the government is taxed...by the government. It's, like, can't you just pay me 20% less and save on the bureaucratic overhead?</p>
<p>Oh man, agreed. I have thought this many times myself, especially when I was actually working at the NIH.</p>
<p>I have combed the IRS website as well as other sites to find the following info - any amount of your stipend that you receive in a check, you are liable for on taxes. For those of us in the life sciences with stipends in the 20 to 30 grand range, this amounts to 10% on federal income tax and state income tax varies from 0% as in Washington to 6% as in North Carolina. Social security, medicare and other payroll taxes are not taxed. btw the difference between a 25000 stipend at UNC vs Vanderbilt is 1750 vs 1875 per month take home. Adds a new layer of depth to determining graduate school apps.</p>
<p>If $125 a month is the determining factor in where you go to grad school, then you got pretty lucky with your research interests.</p>
<p>Also, just looking at the paystub I got today, they withheld 14% of my paycheck for "FIT" and "SIT" which I imagine are Federal and State income taxes. No idea if the FIT includes social security, disability, and all the other sorts of things that also need to be paid into.</p>
<p>FIT does not include payroll taxes like soc sec and FICA and whatnot. I wasn't suggesting that a mere 7% reduction in pay for 5-6 years would be a substantial deciding factor for graduate school. If I were so guided by salary you can bet that I wouldn't be going to graduate school or even in science at all. However, we were discussing stipends and taxes and I simply suggested that this is something a prospective graduate student might be interested in.</p>
<p>jmilton, In which grad school your friend is? I am planning for PhD in Chemical Engineering.</p>
<p>I know this is old but to address;</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is not true. What determines whether or not you pay taxes on scholarships and fellowships is not whether or not you earned it by working or services, but what it’s used for. Fellowships that go towards tuition and required fees are nontaxable. Fellowships that go towards living expenses are taxable. That includes the stipend portion of the vast majority of graduate fellowships, both institutional and external.</p>
<p>That’s also true of scholarships on the undergraduate level. I had to pay taxes on my room and board scholarship in college even though I never saw any of that money.</p>
<p>Extra note: Columbia’s stipend is about $31-32 now, but they don’t pay us a housing subsidy. They <em>do</em> offer subsidized housing in the Morningside Heights neighborhood for far cheaper than you can find an apartment in this area on the market.</p>