IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/14004.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Online Postsecondary Education and the Higher Education Tax Benefits: An Analysis with Implications for Tax Administration

In: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 32

Author

Listed:
  • Caroline M. Hoxby

Abstract

Online postsecondary education is growing rapidly and increasingly dominates the use of the tax benefits for higher education: the American Opportunity Tax Credit, the Lifelong Learning Credit, and the Deduction for Tuition and Fees. Because online education does not closely resemble "brick-and-mortar" residential college education aimed at 18- to 23-year-olds, it presents new challenges and opportunities for administering the tax benefits for higher education. In this paper, I combine tax data with administrative data from the US Department of Education for cross-validation, to study compliance, and to gain understanding of how online schools and students use tax benefits for higher education. I also analyze take-up of the tax benefits and how they affect changes in earnings from before enrollment to after enrollment. The findings suggest several practical implications for the administration of the tax benefits, including form revisions, federal data coordination, and novel uses of earnings data to target compliance reviews.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Caroline M. Hoxby, 2018. "Online Postsecondary Education and the Higher Education Tax Benefits: An Analysis with Implications for Tax Administration," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 32, pages 45-106, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:14004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoxby, Caroline M. & Bulman, George B., 2016. "The effects of the tax deduction for postsecondary tuition: Implications for structuring tax-based aid," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 23-60.
    2. Caroline M. Hoxby, 2014. "The Economics of Online Postsecondary Education: MOOCs, Nonselective Education, and Highly Selective Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 528-533, May.
    3. George B. Bulman & Caroline M. Hoxby, 2015. "The Returns to the Federal Tax Credits for Higher Education," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 13-88.
    4. David J. Deming & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz & Noam Yuchtman, 2015. "Can Online Learning Bend the Higher Education Cost Curve?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 496-501, May.
    5. Michael S. McPherson & Lawrence S. Bacow, 2015. "Online Higher Education: Beyond the Hype Cycle," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 135-154, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin Faber & Rosa Sanchis-Guarner & Felix Weinhardt, 2015. "ICT and Education: Evidence from Student Home Addresses," SERC Discussion Papers 0186, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. M Paula Cacault & Christian Hildebrand & Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti & Michele Pellizzari, 2021. "Distance Learning in Higher Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment [A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 2322-2372.
    3. Bergman, Peter & Denning, Jeffrey T. & Manoli, Dayanand, 2017. "Broken Tax Breaks? Evidence from a Tax Credit Information Experiment with 1,000,000 Students," IZA Discussion Papers 10997, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Susan Dynarski & Judith Scott-Clayton, 2016. "Tax Benefits for College Attendance," NBER Working Papers 22127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Hardt, David & Nagler, Markus & Rincke, Johannes, 2022. "Can peer mentoring improve online teaching effectiveness? An RCT during the COVID-19 pandemic," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    6. French, Robert & Oreopoulos, Philip, 2017. "Behavioral barriers transitioning to college," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 48-63.
    7. Day Manoli & Nicholas Turner, 2018. "Cash-on-Hand and College Enrollment: Evidence from Population Tax Data and the Earned Income Tax Credit," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 242-271, May.
    8. Van den Berge, Wiljan & Jongen, Egbert L. W. & van der Wiel, Karen, 2017. "Using Tax Deductions to Promote Lifelong Learning: Real and Shifting Responses," IZA Discussion Papers 10885, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Tong, Tingting & Li, Haizheng, 2018. "Demand for MOOC - An Application of Big Data," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 194-207.
    10. Van den Berge, Wiljan & Jongen, Egbert L. W. & van der Wiel, Karen, 2017. "Using Tax Deductions to Promote Lifelong Learning: Real and Shifting Responses," IZA Discussion Papers 10885, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Wiljan van den Berge & Egbert Jongen & Karen van der Wiel, 2023. "The effects of a tax deduction for lifelong learning expenditures," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(3), pages 729-756, June.
    12. White, Gareth R.T. & Samuel, Anthony, 2019. "Programmatic Advertising: Forewarning and avoiding hype-cycle failure," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 157-168.
    13. Jeffrey T. Denning & Eric R. Eide & Kevin J. Mumford & Richard W. Patterson & Merrill Warnick, 2022. "Why Have College Completion Rates Increased?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 1-29, July.
    14. Benjamin T. Skinner, 2019. "Making the Connection: Broadband Access and Online Course Enrollment at Public Open Admissions Institutions," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 60(7), pages 960-999, November.
    15. Bianchi, Nicola & Lu, Yi & Song, Hong, 2022. "The effect of computer-assisted learning on students’ long-term development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    16. Eric P. Chiang & Jose J. Vazquez, 2018. "Using Technology to Complete the Natural Learning Path in a Principles of Economics Course," Journal of Economics Teaching, Journal of Economics Teaching, vol. 2(2), pages 104-114, January.
    17. Emilie Dargaud & Fréedéeric Jouneau-Sion, 2020. "The good MOOC and the universities," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(5), pages 474-490, September.
    18. Marigee Bacolod & Stephen Mehay & Elda Pema, 2018. "Who succeeds in distance learning? Evidence from quantile panel data estimation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(4), pages 1129-1145, April.
    19. Mikola, Derek & Webb, Matthew D., 2023. "Finish it and it is free: An evaluation of college graduation subsidies," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    20. Rosa Sanchis-Guarner & José Montalbán & Felix Weinhardt, 2021. "Home Broadband and Human Capital Formation," CESifo Working Paper Series 8846, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:14004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.