President Trump’s new tax policy will go into effect for the 2018 tax season. With this, some college students may see an increase in their tax returns.

The new policy includes a few changes for individuals. Personal exemptions will be eliminated and consequently, the standard deduction will be almost double what it is now. Rates and income levels applied to the current seven tax brackets will be changed and individuals’ itemized deductions for state income taxes and local property taxes will be capped at $10,000. Individuals will also only be allowed to deduct mortgage interest on the first $750,000 they borrow, down from the current cap at $1 million.

While there are other changes, such as major corporate tax cuts, they will most likely not affect the majority of college students. According to Tyler Schipper, economics professor at St. Thomas, because most college students are only working part-time jobs, they would most likely fall into the two lowest tax brackets. He said that those in the lowest tax bracket will not see a change in their tax returns and those in the second lowest will only see a slight increase.

“It’s that (second) tax bracket then, between ten thousand and about forty thousand dollars, where that got lowered from about 15 percent to 12 percent,” Schipper said. “So if you are a student that has a part time job and you are in that tax bracket, it does mean that you get some savings there.”

Schipper said for those receiving savings, it will add up to somewhere between five and 15 dollars a month.

“It looks pretty small, but it’s not nothing,” Schipper said.

Sophomore marketing and family business major Alex Syverson expected the plan to include more future benefits for younger people.

“I wish there would have been more tax incentivizing for younger people to save for retirement,” he said, “especially because we’re going to be self-funding social security.”

Because the new plan doesn’t currently have a big impact on college students, Syverson said he is nervous to see how it will affect these students in the coming years.

“There could have been a lot that affected younger workers,” he said. “I’m a little worried we’re going to end up footing the bill for this, which is just kind of how it always goes.”

Although there are not a lot of added benefits for students in the new tax plan, there are some other benefits that were kept in the plan that were originally expected to be cut. According to Schipper, these include student loan interest deductions, graduate student tuition waivers and non taxable employer tuition subsidies.

“A lot of the educational things that were talked about getting rid of, didn’t end up happening,” Schipper said. “So that actually helps students quite a bit.”

Although economists like Schipper can estimate what effects the tax policy will have, he admits there are a number of factors that make it hard to know for sure what the results will be.

“We can’t say, ‘You make this amount of money, therefore you’re getting a benefit from this or not,’” Schipper said.

Kat Barrett can be reached at barr1289@stthomas.edu.