Thank you in advance for your help!
My husband is a full time medical student as of January of this year (2023). A couple months ago, I was fortunate enough to get a staff position at the university where he goes to school. One of the benefits of the job is that after I work here for a year my spouse can receive 50% tuition remission. Medical school is insanely expensive, so 50% off would literally be about a $20k worth. I know I have to pay taxes on this every semester (they break up the total gift amount's taxes and spread it out over each of my paychecks), but I have two questions for anyone who may have some insight. If it helps, we live in Missouri, I currently make around $44k, he is not working at all so I am the sole income earner this year.
1. Will this kind of benefit be extremely expensive for me in the short term? I am nervous that literally increasing my taxable income by 50% without actually receiving a pay raise will be unsustainable for us since we only have my income and his student loans. We max out his federal loans as it is. If this does have a significant impact on us, I am hopeful we can work with our Financial Aid office to increase the amount of loans we can take out just to cover the taxes for now. But I really don't know if itll be as bad as I am imagining.
2. I am currently in repayment on my own student loans and as of right now I do not have to pay anything (I am on SAVE right now) but I am not sure if the tuition remission "income" will be used to determine the payment I am required to make.
I hate that I am questioning if something that is supposed to save us money is something that we can afford, but I also know that most people who get tuition remission are not getting $20k a year so I acknowledge that that plays a huge part of this.
Thank you so much for your time!
