At the outset, maybe I should explain how I came to visit the web site “Nerdwallet“, but I honestly have no idea. My daily reading regimen, in these days of the Internet, can take me into uncharted waters, and there I was.
What caught my eye in the article that I read was that some private employers (three of them listed, all of them of some significant size) were beginning to assist employees with repayment of their student loans, which the author states now run an average of $29,000 per graduate. Included in the program were the things you would expect in terms of limits on the benefit, and the years an employee had to be employed in order to qualify for this particular perk, but nevertheless it is an interesting development. It is certainly better that employer and employee work together to repay the loans, rather than simply defaulting (as many students do).
Up until now, this type of benefit has been associated primarily with government jobs, so any benefit paid was ultimately borne entirely by the taxpayers. Corporate repayment assistance still reduces a company’s tax obligations, but the impact on the taxpayer is somewhat muted, given the nominal corporate tax rate of 35%.
Although this is off to a modest start, what I find most encouraging is the fact that the assistance is coming from an entity other than the government, which shows that it can be done. I’m hoping that Bernie and Hillary take note.