Campaign promise fulfilled: student loan forgiveness

[Acer]

To speak further to how this is implemented, a couple thoughts:

The 10K/20K comes from future payments to the government, spread over the years. Standard is 10 years, consolidation can extend it to 30. Within that are deferments, hardship payment plans. It should be accounted for in the federal budget, but it's spread over decades.

A refundable tax credit would have to be taken right out of the treasury. If it's a one-year thing, then that's all $300 (or whatever) billion right now.

A non-refundable credit, that is no greater than your tax liability, is of significantly reduced value to most people in the target range, especially if it is paid in one year. They probably owe far, far less than $10,000 in tax in a given year in their early careers when student loans are being paid. One again, people who already have money would get the benefit, those who don't would be short-changed (like most deductions and tax shelters these days.)

You could chop it up, and make it $x per year for y years, but you've just added yet another form and a dozen pages to the bloated tax code.