Kelley Frazier believes that paying the state back taxes that the school doesn’t take out of her hard earned check isn’t fair.
Frazier currently works at the Hull Center’s front desk and is making $7.50 an hour.
According to the campus student career development office the situation is a misunderstanding.
“At the end of each fiscal year the only reason a student would owe money back would be if they work over the summer in which they would be accountable for a higher tax bracket,” director of career services, Susan Webb said.
Along with Frazier, other OU student employees have yet to be effected by the new tax situation, but they don’t like the idea of paying back money.
Students are only allowed to work nine hours a week. This gives the student a total of eighteen hours on their biweekly pay check in which taxes are not currently being taking out by the school for the state.
“This is ridiculous,” sophomore Tonya Bell said. “Compared to public school our salaries suck because we are limited to the amount of money we can make on our paychecks.”
Webb said that being able to only work those nine limited hours is actually helpful, because the students will not fall into a large enough tax bracket to withdraw the state taxes from their pay checks.
Students are still at an outrage due to the lack of information they are receiving on the work-study tax situation.
There are some students that believe or feel that because the university does not take taxes from their checks that there’s no issue just more money for them.
Senior Sarah Blecha has maintained an on campus job throughout her five years here.
She said she doesn’t notice any negative sides to not having taxes taken out of her check.
“I don’t make that much in my off-campus jobs,” Blecha said. “So, I always get a return. I think I gain more for not being taxed.”
Webb noted that not every working student is not currently affected by the work-study tax situation unless they are working off campus and their gross pay is exceeding the amount allowed as a student worker.
Another factor students would want to consider would be the forms they fill out prior to starting an on-campus job Webb said.
“Also the way the student fills out their W-4s and the amount of dependents they claim [could cause students to owe money],” Webb said.