| 1. |
Parents who pay private school tuition do not “pay twice” for their
child’s education.
Parents pay once for the education of their child when they pay tuition for
K-12 private schooling. What parents pay in school property taxes provides
educational opportunity for all children.
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| 2. |
When citizens make decisions to privately purchase other services or commodities, such as security protection, private roads, or country club memberships, they do not get a tax credit against the public budget for police protection, highways, or public golf courses and public swimming pools.
The private purchase of those items hardly amounts to double taxation.
Similarly, parents who enroll their children in private school are not being
taxed a second time. Rather, they have made a free choice to purchase a
private service that is separate from the societal obligation they share with
their neighbors (many of whom don’t even have children) to provide a
mechanism (public schools) to educate the public as a whole.
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| 3. |
Taxpayers want every child in a community to be well-educated, not just their own children.
- They want the mechanic who repairs their car to be well-educated.
- They want the nurses’ aide who cares for a parent in a nursing home to be well-educated.
- They want the bank teller who handles their transactions to be
well-educated.
- They want all students to be prepared to be productive, law-abiding
citizens.
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| 4. |
In a community, 95% of the taxpayers who support public schools should not be forced to subsidize tax credits to 5% of the taxpayers who choose to support private schools.
Tuition tax credits are almost akin to double taxation for the vast majority
of taxpayers: taxing them once to support free public schools and again to
subsidize certain private and religious schools. When income tax credits for
K-12 private school tuition have been proposed before the U.S. Congress, the
tax proposals have been dubbed “welfare for the rich” and have consistently
failed.
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| 5. |
Public tax policy that encourages parents to enroll their children in private school erodes community support for public schools.
Neighborhood public schools depend on community support—and particularly for support of bond elections to build and repair schools.
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| 6. |
Private schools are not lobbying at the Capitol for tax credits for
private school tuition, because they can foresee myriad negative
consequences.
For example: State tax policy can change each biennium. A private school
could undertake a building program after enrollment increased due to tuition
tax credits; then two years later the law could change and take away tax
credits, causing the private school to lose enrollment yet still be saddled
with construction debt.
Another example: Legislators undoubtedly would attach strings to any state
tuition tax credit program, which in effect would regulate private schools. A
law could say that a parent can only get the tax credit if a child attends a
private school that chooses which students to admit on the basis of a
lottery...or that a religious school could not discriminate in admissions on
the basis of a child’s religion...or that the tax credits could only be used
if a child attends a private school that meets criteria set by the State of
Texas.
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