Dear AFT Guild Members,
Please see the information below from the national AFT regarding student debt updates and free tax filing services. Recall the Federal and State tax filing deadlines for San Diego County residents were both pushed back to June 17, 2024.
In Solidarity,
Jim
Jim Mahler, President
AFT Guild, Local 1931
Begin forwarded message:
From: Randi Weingarten <E-activist@action.aft.org>
Subject: SAVE on student debt & file your taxes for free
Date: April 9, 2024 at 7:00:01 AM PDT
To: aftjim@mac.com
AFT
Jim,
Happy Spring! I wanted to flag several economic and educational opportunities for you and your members this month. We’ve been working overtime with the Biden administration on fixing key issues for our members, including addressing the student debt crisis, ensuring students have access to college, reducing teacher shortages, and more. These are real solutions to improve the lives of our members, our families and our communities.
There’s a lot of information in here, so please be sure to read it through and pass on the information to your members.
Reducing student debt: First, in case you missed it, on April 1 we co-hosted a webinar with the White House and the National Education Association on the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan—the most affordable income-driven student loan repayment plan in history. You may be more familiar with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program; SAVE complements PSLF by allowing public service workers to reduce their monthly payments while accruing credit toward full forgiveness after 10 years of loan payments. For everyone else, it still offers the potential to greatly reduce monthly payments. Check out our webinar recording and the wonderful stories of how SAVE has transformed AFT and NEA members’ lives.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced life-changing real solutions to ease the student debt burden for nearly 30 million Americans. When enacted, these new regulations will alleviate runaway interest for student loans up to $20,000, automatically discharge debt for many AFT members eligible for PSLF or SAVE, eliminate debt for borrowers who have been paying for 20 years, help borrowers enrolled in low-financial-value programs or institutions, and assist borrowers experiencing hardship due to student debt. The AFT was represented during the negotiated rulemaking by an AFT leader who advocated to ensure that any borrower struggling to pay back student debt would benefit from these regulations. Please read and share my statement here.
Free tax online filing: The Biden administration has worked to make filing taxes easier than ever. Many of us have relied on paid online services, but the Biden administration has rolled out a pilot program to allow eligible taxpayers to easily file their taxes online for free. The program is available in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. This means our members in these 12 states who have relatively simple tax situations can skip the paid services and save money. Let’s make sure all our members in the pilot states know that they may be eligible to file for free by this weekend’s deadline. This is yet another way that Biden is working to make life easier for everyday people. Please share this site with your members.
In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President