Welcome back to The Breakfast here on Plus TV Africa. Let's now share with you things that happened today in history the 28th of April. I'm starting with a really sad story that took place in 2012, somewhere on the expressway in Edo state. It was on this day that an auto crash happened. The, of course, Nigerian Union of Journalists were thrown into mourning on this day. It was the shocking death of three journalists who were involved in a gas limoto accident involving the convoy of Governor Adams Oshomole along the Ochi road, Isako Westlake government area of the state. The accident occurred sometime around 12.45 p.m. when the convoy was coming from an action Congress of Nigeria meeting. At that time, of course, Governor Oshomole drove himself and escaped death by the Whiskers when a TIPA lorry was said to have rammed into his convoy. The governor was at the hospital with the victims, which also included his security details as, of course, he tried to press on the doctors to do what was necessary to save their lives. Eventually, of course, the three of those persons, journalists who were part of that convoy and members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, all passed on that day. And so it was a really, really sad incident. A lot of them were taken to have been in central hospital at the end of the day when, of course, the case became critical. It was on this day, once again, there's not too much in the story to share that those three journalists died in that car accident. So sad. Yes, really, really sad. I remember also, I can't remember his name now, that also passed in the car accident. I think it was, oh, I don't want to make any mistakes, similar story. But in this same history as well, April 28th, back in the year, we're talking about 2018, the government of India announced that electricity has reached every village in India. So the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced that this was achieved when a remote village in the northeastern state of Manipur became the last to be connected to the grid. And nearly 600,000 villages in India had been given electricity connection. We know that India is the largest, the third largest consumer of power, and also the third largest producer of power. But even though there were lots of political opposition to that, opposition parties called this achievement a ruse, that this was ahead of the elections in the country. But like I mentioned, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that it would be remembered as a historic day in the development of India. And he had promised some years back in his independence speech in 2015 that every Indian village would be electrified in the next 1,000 days. But we know that media reports, investigations after that showed that this great stride of village electrification in India still leaves 90% of people in India without electricity. Yet they had been connected to the grid, but the power distribution was an issue. I think we still have places in Nigeria not connected to the grid. But they all have been connected to the grid, but the issue remains, getting the power distributed down to their homes, their businesses, and where they actually need them most. But they're one step ahead. I think the EKEDC needs to move offices to India and see what they can do to assist. Right. What they can do to assist? See how they can, you know, I see. I mean, so it's a good thing, I mean, that every community in India now has been connected to the grid. The next stage obviously would be to power, you know, all these communities. I don't know how much electricity India currently generates. But, you know, we always share these stories and bring it back home, you know, and of course, talk about our own situation. We're still hovering around 4,000 megawatts for a country of 200 million people. There's places that are not connected to the grid. There's places who have been connected to the grid but have not had power in three years. I remember when I was on radio, then people used to call the EEDC and say, you know, our community in Abakaliki or our community in Benway or, you know, here and there have not had power in two years or had power in three years. Everybody uses generators. Yeah, you know, and that's life that they've been used to for the last couple of years. So let's, you know, as much as, you know, we would celebrate the fact that India is taking that step, it is also a good thing, you know, the population is entirely insane. So I know it must be also difficult to ensure that every single person in India has electricity. But it's also the same thing that we will do here in Nigeria and make sure that everybody's connected to the grid and everybody gets their prepaid meters and everybody gets, you know, constant electricity. The electricity situation in Nigeria is too poor, you know, to even shame India.  And because of that, the, the, you know, EKDC people were very angry and they stopped giving people lights. I don't know how that true is, but that's what I heard. Well, we have our, we have our peculiar knowledge. But you should be happy that, I mean, that's your job to prevent itself. From generation to transmission to distribution. And of course, bill payments also, Nigerians also have bill payments. But do you know how much people paid for this prepaid meters? Yeah, well, you know, some people paid as much as 100K. Yeah.  You know, but I'm saying that Nigerians themselves have their own issues, you know, with payment, we were paying bills. There's people who steal electricity. There's people who tap electricity and, you know, bypass their meters.  Yeah, those things happen. Like you're paying, you're paying power bills for two families. Absolutely. All right. We're going to go on a short break. When we come back, we're moving into our first major conversation for today, the Chandler Government Index ranking of Nigeria. Like I said earlier, we're only better than Zimbabwe and Venezuela. And Nigeria ranks 102 out of 104.  So we'll talk about that next when we come back from this break. Stay with us.


Welcome to town meeting televisions, continuing coverage of general election 2020. Today, we're talking to some of the uncontested candidates from South Burlington and also Burlington's South End. We have Barbara Rachelson from District 6-6. That's my neighborhood. Welcome, Barbara. And we have Maida Townsend, who is from South Burlington District 7-4, and John Kalaki, who is from South Burlington 7-3. Martin Lalonde, who could not join us, is also uncontested. I have to make sure I have all the districts right. He's in 7-1. And as you noted before, Anne Pugh is in a contested race in District 7-2. So thank you so much for joining us. I just want to remind folks that if you would like to call, we certainly will welcome your calls at<PHONE_NUMBER>. So we're gonna just start with opening statements. And Barbara Rachelson, why don't you tell us why you're running for reelection and what qualifies you for the position? Thank you, Lauren. So I'm Barbara Rachelson. I'm running for reelection. And my background is I am a social worker. I don't do direct social work. I went to grad school to work on policy because I really have been committed to social change since my high school and college days, I guess. And I've been an employer. I have run nonprofit organizations. I've been in the CEO role of two different nonprofit organizations for a total of 33 years. I have particularly been committed to working on issues related to children and families. Also, some of the serious problems that our society is struggling with now, addiction, mental health challenges, poverty. And I am a dedicated legislator. I am, my colleagues will vouch for me that I am a sort of an obsessive researcher and want to always see what the evidence shows and like how have these policies played out in other places. I am not a fan of law of anecdote and we seem to do a lot of that in Vermont. I also have served on a number of boards. I'm a mom, I was a working mother and I'll end there. Thank you so much. We'll talk about some of the issues that are important to you coming up. Thank you. Representative Mada Townsend, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us why you're running for reelection and why you're qualified. Okay, thanks. I'm running for reelection to offer stability for my constituents in this very unstable timeframe. The experience that I bring to the work is eight years, having served in the legislature, the first six years on house government operations and the last two years, this most recent biennium on house appropriations. Thank you so much. That was very succinct. Excellent. John Colacchi, you are running, this would be your second term, the first term you had a bit of a contest and now you're in contested. So that must be a little bit of a relief. It is and I did run into my opponent from two years ago in the post office the other day. We had a nice visit, we're all friends of course. I retired from running the Flynn Center in downtown Burlington a great years, two years ago and ran for my first term. And so as a citizen legislator in my first term, it was extraordinary for me because I was wanting this next part of my life to be about service. And in my first two years, I really focused on affordable housing, early education, livable wages, small businesses, environment, recovery homes, mitigating homelessness and improving conditions for women in our prison in South Burlington. I have been, it's been a profound two years and I really hope that I can, I've run it uncontested. So I, as we rebuild our personal, social and civic lives, I really wanna help for monitors. I continue my service. Thank you so much. Mita, why don't we start with you? I'm gonna hop right to the budget question.  Well, there is a set approach which we use for the budget. We take testimony from our policy committees, the policy, the committee's jurisdiction. We take testimony from all of the governmental agencies and we take policy, we take testimony from the public and the advocates. And then we set about, then we set about trying to put together what resources we have at hand to meet the needs, to best meet the needs of the people as we have understood them. Now, in this context, in this timeframe, we have heard from our economist resources that budgeting in this COVID era is somewhat like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall or to ride a wild tiger and having been a member of House Appropriations, putting together multiple budgets in this current calendar year, I can testify that yes, indeed, that is true. When we get to January to start work on first a budget adjustment for the current fiscal year 21 and also to start work on the full year, fiscal year 22, we really don't know yet what we will be facing just as we really did not know what we would be facing when we came back in in August to deal with the full year FY21 budget. But we do have very healthy reserves that we did not have to touch in any meaningful big way to meet the needs in the fiscal year 21 budget. And we will simply have to assess where we are. I have to be very realistic and share that it will be very, very difficult even with our over $200 million in reserves that are still sitting there to be used, if necessary. We were very fortunate to have the $1.25 billion from the federal government in COVID money to use for the FY21 budget. And we believe we used those dollars very, very well. So I'm gonna just pause you because it's almost impossible to in an extremely short time summarize the work that you have done on the Appropriations Committee. And so you've given us a very high level and we can talk for an hour on this question because you've really been on the front line there. I'm wondering, John, you are not on the Appropriations Committee but why don't you tell us your view of the challenges ahead with the budget and your political philosophy on that? Sure, I sit in general housing and military affairs. So affordable housing is something that we work a lot on and that's certainly a big issue. And it's a concern about how we keep building and making them more affordable. I wanna go back, made it is quite extraordinary in the budget but if all is uncertainty, we did work with the House, the Senate and the administration and there was a balanced budget of 7.1 and $5 billion that was passed. And we continued programs and we didn't really dip in significantly into the reserves which is really important. Now that COVID money was essential at 1.2. We're hoping that there'll be an additional stimulus package after November 3rd or what we hope it'll come in and because it's needed, it is gonna be very difficult but I think what we learned in COVID is how to work differently. And I'm new to this the week but I really saw in three weeks time we turned around the budget for the nine months and stuff because we all work together with kind of shared principles in a way and less siloed and I think there's some systemic issues of the benefits of working in that way. And I think really one of the things is not how can we do more work lessons because the state has been doing that and we'll talk about nonprofit sector later on but we have to talk about how to do better with lessons. And I think we've learned some things with our COVID relief money, how we can do better. And I hope those examples resonate and continue to teach us. Thank you so much. Barbara Rachelson, is anything you've heard resonate with you and what is your thinking about the budget? A couple of things. One is I think it's a chance to, I mean, I think John is totally right. We can't do more with less. In fact, I think we might want to do less in some cases. I know that there are efficiencies that we can still realize from doing some educational consolidation, which I know is a touchy big subject. I won't get into that. But also corrections. I'm excited to see or to hear that we're going to rethink corrections. It's a gigantic dollar figure and our results from it are terrible. Like if healthcare were that bad a result, we would be screaming and yelling. So we know that there are places we are spending money now that I think we really need to look differently. Same thing with the revenues. I just think that we also have seen one weird opportunity with COVID, which is people moving to the state. And so we need to look at people who can afford to buy houses over a million dollars or very luxury items. Because we know I'm hearing from constituents more and more how tough it is financially. Like as tough as people have felt in the past, it's worse now. So we do have to really, it's not gonna, I hope we don't do business as usual. And the under representative toll leadership, they have involved the policy committees more, which has been great. But we also need a mechanism to say, we can save $3 million a year, but we're not gonna do that in the first year. Because again, we're always looking at that 12 months. And if we don't have a mechanism to kind of recognize that something will bring savings later, you know, it's that whole prevention thing that we talk about. We, it's like, well, we have to have it by June 30th when the budget closes. So again, I'm hoping we can do some like out of the ordinary thinking. Thank you. I'm just gonna remind our viewers if you'd like to give us a call, we're talking with candidates who are uncontested in district 66, the South End of Burlington and in South Burlington. So you are welcome to call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. So John, you mentioned the impact of COVID on the budget process. Well, talk about what you think the impact of this health emergency has been on the state and where the opportunities are or, you know, the real areas of concern, just kind of your analysis about Vermont in the time of COVID. Well, I'm gonna talk about my experience on the committee. And one thing that we worked on during COVID is we had to really get our arms around the homeless population in Vermont because they could not really stay in shelters and congregate settings. We had to isolate and move people more safely into hotel rooms. And every January, there's a point in time survey done across the state saying how large is our homeless population in Vermont? And those numbers are usually about 1,000 to 1,200 people and they're imprecise because it's a day. But during the height of the pandemic, we had over 1,900 people in hotels and 245 of those folks were kids. And so that's a big number. That's also a number that we can get our arms around. And the amazing thing is we put an $85 million package together, COVID relief funds that was systemic, that built out, we made shelters. They were renovated so that they could be socially distanced. We bought derelict properties and made them into homes for people. We have a program for landlords with derelict properties. They could get $30,000 to upgrade their property if they were five years, a lot of homeless are low, you come from honors to live there. So we began to change some of the dynamics and what is interesting to me is that this is a game changer for the way we really work with this population because there's multiple needs. It's not just housing, I mean, housing is healthcare but you also have a lot of wraparound services and we really understood that integrating them was the way to go and not keeping things in silos. So for me, I think a lasting impact is that we look at rehousing people in a systemic way. There's a possibility to really significantly eat away at that 2,000 people who really don't have homes in our state. Thank you. You bring up something that's really interesting and Barbara, you might opt to talk more about this but problems that seemed really difficult and insurmountable before the COVID emergency, all of a sudden people were able to get with it and reach the gaps and collaborate and solve the problem. And I wonder if you saw examples of that, Barbara Rachelson. Well, for sure, I must say, and Meita may have a better take on this since she and I started in the legislature at the same time, there was a lot of incredible goodwill among all three parties and getting things done in a way that I don't think I've seen, in general, I mean, Vermont's pretty good, but it was extraordinary how well everybody worked together and I know locally with the effort John just talked about, I mean, it was pretty impressive. I've talked to a few of the local providers including Rita Markley, I know how impressive it was that they were able to quickly house so many people and I don't think anyone got COVID. I mean, it was just really of the homeless population. It was phenomenal because people don't always make that time for collaboration and what I was hearing from my nonprofit buddies were people, it was that same thing we were seeing in Montpelier. People were really mission focused and did what they had to do and thank goodness we live in a place that we have such caring people. Yeah, thank you. Meita Townsend, tell us about your view of the COVID health emergency and what impact it's having on Vermont from your perspective. Well, I think it provided a very clear light very quickly as to the fragility that an awful lot of Vermonters live with. It's particularly clear within communities that have been over time marginalized in various ways and part of what we looked at as a legislature, both chambers as well as the administration was how we could be supportive as quickly as possible in as many different ways in a meaningful way, not just band-aids, for instance, what John was referencing is going upstream to deal with the housing issue, not just continuing to do quote unquote emergency housing, but to look at a means for providing good solid housing for folks moving forward, a lasting kind of solution. And everywhere we could, I felt in various bills as well as in the budget, wherever there was an opportunity to reach out to provide extra support to those who were among the most fragile in the state, that opportunity was taken, whether it was reaching out through the budget with regard to health disparities, communities of color, Native American communities, the homeless, folks living without good shelter, if in a whole lot of various ways, effort was focused there in, let me just leave that there since you wanted to focus on health. We also saw that it was necessary to provide stabilization for the healthcare system writ large and we managed to do that in a meaningful way and framing it in such a way that it wasn't only the largest, most powerful players on the scene who were able to take advantage of what funds we could provide. We wanted to make sure that the smaller entities had an equal chance and in some instances, more of a chance because they were so little. Great, that's good. Yeah, I mean, again, COVID is one of those other topics that will take us a lifetime. But Lauren, Glenn, I think a factor is that as a rural state, we got $1.25 billion and we had one of the highest per capita amount of money that came into our state because of our population. And so we had an opportunity and we had to turn it around very quickly on this and we had to listen to our providers who we had really under-resourced for a very long time. And so we were able to hear from them solutions that so in my example, $85 million, that would be unheard of in any other budget year to say, if you had another $85 million, how could we do things differently? So I think this one-time infusion has been a game changer for systemic thinking. And now I think what we need to do is figure that out as Barbara was saying, going forward. How do we look at this a little bit differently and listen to the nonprofit providers and the people doing the work in our state? And I just wanna point out too that at least some of the nonprofit providers and partners that we work with on House Judiciary, we were enticing them to do more and they were like, oh no. I mean, one thing is there was a very hard deadline to spend the money. And so I think some of the nonprofits didn't have the capacity to be able to pull that off. So that's unfortunate, but Vermont was very lucky. If I could add in one little thing. Well, that federal infusion, the $1.25 billion was incredibly important. I think we need to give due regard also to how Vermonters, large numbers of Vermonters pay those deferred taxes, the taxes that were deferred back in April. It was astonishing. It went beyond what had been envisioned would come in in the middle of the summer in terms of deferred tax money being paid. Incredibly helpful in meeting the needs of Vermonters and their communities. There was also the work within the departments and agencies, they scrubbed their budgets like crazy, scrub, scrub, scrub, and came up with something like $30 million worth of what are called inversions that we could drop to the bottom line to use again in support of Vermonters and their communities. Thank you. Maita, I'm gonna ask you the education question. This is deep background for you. And I think education financing has been talked about since 1990 when we started this channel. So maybe you talk about that, tell us what you think is next for education financing. And I'm gonna go find while you do that a light because I realize that I'm in the dark. So why don't you go ahead and answer that? And I will all be listening. Okay. Well, clearly the funding mechanism for pre-K through 12 schools has gotten increasingly complex over the years. A piece that if this were an easy situation or an easy question to solve, it would have been solved by now. There's nothing easy about this. There's no magic answer. But there is out there an entity called the Tax Structure Commission. It was established by Statue in 2018. And they've been working like mad for the last two years. They're due to make their final report in January of 2021. And they've met over 25 times. They've been taking testimony from a variety of sources, a variety of people and organizations. And it's their job to make recommendations as to based on all of the input and their study, how we should move forward as it relates to our tax structure. Obviously right at the head of the list there, property taxes and the education tax. A similar tax commission presented its work back in 2010. Suggested, for instance, looking at how we deal with tax expenditures, that sort of thing. But we never made much headway on their recommendations. Hopefully, now that 10 more years have gone by and people have gotten more and more just really hammered, shall I say, it's a huge burden that people are carrying. Hopefully the recommendations which this commission brings forward in January will see good conversation, good work to follow through. Moving forward. Yeah, John, you would be next on your approach to education financing. What needs to happen from your view? Well, one thing I thought might have mentioned but I'll mention it and she'll correct me if I didn't get it quite right. But what we did do is we held education property tax is for fiscal year 21 to what they would have been if COVID hadn't happened. So there wouldn't be an additional burden on Vermonters. So that was one strategy there. As a freshman in the halls in Montpelier, I hear whispered that maybe property tax isn't the way we should go and maybe we should really look at income tax and taxing in that way for our schools in Vermont. And I think it's an interesting idea to kind of pursue and analyze more. I did read the blue ribbon tax portion. So we've had a lot of study done about this and but there's, I would say a lot of inaction as well. And I think maybe it's right, the tipping point has happened and I really hope we do look at either is property tax the best way or what other ways to do it. I think that's really what we need to do in this coming year. Don't we in effect have an income tax based education financing? There is the income sensitivity piece. Income sensitivity. But I'm saying that take it away from property tax and tie it directly into our state income tax. That would be separately, yeah. Thank you, yeah. Barbara, Barbara Rachelson, your view on education financing, what's next? Okay, so I spent my first term serving on House Ed and there are probably three to five people in the state that can explain how it works. So one thing is we need a system that at least people can understand because that makes it way worse. There's also some weird built in dynamics of whatever budgets get approved, those, somebody's gotta pay for them and it's not always that school district. So I know I will misrepresentative Donovan who would repeatedly say to constituents when they said you're raising our property, our education taxes, it's like you're the one that's voting on your school budget but still it's a bad system because, because again, I hear so much from people how high their property taxes are, especially in Burlington, it's, I definitely have had many constituents move out of Burlington. Not all of them have left the state, it's concerning and I've had a couple of constituents just try to gain the income sensitivity because they're right on the threshold and they will take time off without pay in order to come in right under it. I would like to see us not, we have fewer school districts, we also have fewer students, we need to put a cap on administrative costs statewide because we're paying way more than we should for each supervisor reunion because each one needs their own whole financial infrastructure. Yeah, I just have a quick side question. Do we know anything about the impact of all these people that are moving into Vermont? Is there gonna be some, is that a net gain property tax expected or is it just to wash because other people owned those buildings before these? Well, there's the transfer, there's the transfer tax, which is a good thing. I don't know, I thought you were gonna ask if they have kids and if they are bringing more children into it. I don't know, I mean, the data is like, yeah, I have not been able to get too much detailed data yet, but I bet when we have our briefing in December, they'll present us with whatever population data is available. Did you have anything to add on that one? No, no, I think Barbara's quite accurate that we don't have the information yet to know for sure what situation is in that regard. Thank you. Let me ask you the F-35 question starting with you, John Kalaki. People are very concerned about the noise of the F-35s. What kind of mitigation efforts are underway or do you think needs to happen that could be affected through the legislature? Well, in my committee, General Housing and Military Affairs, we do the National Guard and so the F-35 is a very pertinent topic of discussion in our committee. Our committee did not move a resolution forward asking to ban the F-35s. Other people in the house are advocates for it. You know, it's a federal decision. It is not a local decision. So I live in South Burlington. I know how loud they are. I have a horse in Williston and the horses completely freak out when those planes go over the barn and it's detrimental to them. You know, I'm afraid they're gonna break out of the pastures and stuff because it is so loud. So I know I have friends who have kids and it's very, it's like we're living in a military zone but it is a federal issue. And so there's almost nothing that our state legislature can do about this, unfortunately. The airport and we've been all involved in looking at getting sound mitigation, which is essential in the corridors. I mean, parts of my native district has been destroyed by these planes in the airport. And so it's essential that we do protect and rebuild the sound for the homes of Manuski and in South Burlington and Burlington and the schools as well. These things are going over the schools, right over the schools. And so I think that that's a more effective place for the legislature to really impact citizens who live here. I'm gonna hop to Mayda and ask you as a South Burlington rep, what's your view on the noise mitigation? What do you think, what's gotta happen next? Well, first, if I could clarify, dear John, my district lost so many houses back before the F-35 that had even arrived. Because the sound levels from the airport had already reached a level, which was considered uninhabitable. So anyway, and just for the very public record, the very public record as folks in my district, no, I have been opposed to the F-35s being here ever since they became an issue. But as John pointed out, it was a decision made quite out of our hands at the federal level. There is work being done, the airport itself just had a meeting last night, actually, for the public. Two hour meeting explaining how the master plan is moving forward and made reference to the efforts they are making with varying degrees of success to get federal money to support sound mitigation. And there's going to be a pilot program. I think it's for 10 homes just to see how this would work to provide the necessary insulation, windows, doors, that sort of thing to mitigate the sound. There's also work to help at Chamberlain School, the little elementary school in my district, which is just a stop, it's a strong stones throw from the airport. The sound levels, if the windows are closed in that little school, the sound levels are below the on paper objectionable levels that's not getting into what it really is like to live with those levels of sound. But if the windows are closed, the sound levels inside the school meet the requirements. But since you can't open a window to maintain those levels, they're looking at that through the airport providing money for an HVAC system so that the air within the school can be fresh in the way it should be kind of thing. So it's an ongoing issue and will take years to cover all of the homes. I mean, decades, literally decades to cover all of the homes which might well be eligible for the work on their homes. And there's also the possibility that the airport might want to buy some homes from residents and do the sound mitigation and then resell. I think there's pretty much been a chord now that no more homes are coming down if I understand correctly. Okay, thank you Barbara, go ahead. I know the legislature, the mayor, our mayor, Mayor Weinberger and the mayor of Winooski met with sort of the Burlington Winooski delegation before this year's part of the biennium and asked for our support for the matching part of this federal grant. That would be the sound and also weatherization. So I know some of these federal monies do require a state match and that might be the case coming up again. So yeah, I must say, especially with changing their schedule to evening flying, I've heard more from folks about the noise. Thanks Barbara, why don't you, we're getting down to our last question here. What do you talk about systemic racism in Vermont and the role the legislature has played if you think it is adequate, if you think reparations are in order and if you think an apology is in order for how we have treated black people in this state? For sure, I think that we should be looking at the reparations issue and the apology. I'm not sure it would have to be a really sincere meaningful policy, I mean not apology, I'm sorry. There's a bill that I put in last time that Kaya Morris and I were working on when she was in the legislature and I'm really gonna push for it. I've talked to Coach Christie about pushing for it again, which is to have a racial impact information available before we pass a bill to see what the policy implications might be on minorities and people of color in particular about 10 states have done it. And it's way better to find out before we pass a law that it's gonna have some unintended consequences than after. It's a lot like asking for a fiscal note and I think it's important for us to try to stop the continuing to do more harm in addition to making reparations. Thank you. Maida, your view of the role of the state in stopping systemic racism, meaning the legislature and the need for reparations and our apology. Well, I think we've made beginning steps in this, particularly in this last biennium, not only in terms of direct efforts at dealing with racial inequity, for instance, in terms, and inequity for all folks in previously marginalized populations. For instance, we had an equity stimulus bill which provided for our immigrant populations the same kind of stimulus support that others in Vermont received, but these folks didn't because of their immigration status. We took care of that. We've dealt with health at least a step with regard to health disparities and getting a handle on that as the racial issues exist in the context of law enforcement. We took a step with regard to having more civilian individuals on the training council, the group that oversees training of law enforcement, folks who have lived experience in terms of there being part of various cross cuts of our population here in state. We now have with the Vermont state police through the budget, civilian, person of color, co-directing the fair and impartial policing program. So we have taken steps, but there are only steps and there are others that I haven't listed there. The whole question about reparations and apologizing, I think apologizing is a very nice thing, but personally I would prefer to see action that makes a difference in people's lives. There was a bill, a different bill, H-478, which was around this whole biennium, which would have set up, if it had passed, it would have set up a task force to consider this very issue of reparations and apology and to make recommendations on what appropriate remedies would be for this state. But it didn't pass. They never saw action and never saw anything in the committee. As I ran out of time, I think. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you, John, your response to this question. Well, I think it's every committee's, and each committee's responsibility to look at this in their own policymaking. And so, you know, in preparation for this, what did general housing military affairs do about systemic racism? Increasing the minimum wage, protecting victims of domestic or sexual violence from housing discrimination, renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day, making sure Indigenous names are on all state parks, agreeing with the treaty signed hundreds of years ago to have free fishing and hunting licenses for our Abenaki people. We did eviction and foreclosure protections during this time. We passed an inclusionary housing bill that you can no longer say a particular kind of housing is not appropriate for the character of a neighborhood. So that's, it's called redlining. It's racist. You know, we, today I submitted a request to begin again, for a homeless bill of rights that we had been working on. Our committee was working with Eugenics, resolution, an apology, and also to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There was talk, should we combine that with the other work of the other committee. And it's like, well, I'm not sure we should combine everything in the one because all of these things are important because, you know, the Eugenics movement is a horrifying chapter in Vermont history of racism. And, you know, literally sterilizing people because they were Abenaki or because they were disabled. You know, so there's that paid family and medical leave is an issue that we want to bring back as well. And that's going to have impact and communities of color. So I think all of these things help with the issue of systemic racism in Vermont. Well, I want to thank the, thank you, John, for that response. And thank the three of you for your public service. I wanted to thank you for that. I appreciate that. Thank you. And I appreciate the opportunity that you are willing to run for another season, another biennium on November 3rd is the election, and you will be voting if you haven't already on Barbara Rachel, son, if you're in the South End of Burlington district, six, six, and made a Townsend who's in district seven, four and John Clackie, who's in district seven, three. Martin Lilan could not join us. So I think that's going to be a great opportunity for you to join us in this contested race. No, Martin seven one. And a seven two. So thank you so much for joining us here tonight. It's just a pleasure to speak with you all. And thank you for watching town, meeting televisions continuing coverage of town meeting. No general election. 2020. Thank you. Thanks, Lauren. Thank you.


Welcome to nursing school explain on this video on pharmacokinetics or in other words how a medication travels through the body or what the body does with different medications and there are four steps of pharmacokinetics and kinetics just think about movements or kinetic energy and pharmacokinetics meaning drugs moving through the body. So the four steps are number one absorption which this video will focus on. After we absorb the medicine it gets distributed, metabolized and excreted but I have separate videos about these other steps. So first of all for absorption it depends on the route of administration and how long it takes from administering the medication for it to reach the bloodstream and the effects depends on the rate, the amount and the route of administration. When we talk about the route of administration for medications we always have to distinguish whether it goes through the GI tract or it does not go through the GI tract. So medications that are absorbed through the GI tract are referred to as enteral medications think about enteric bacteria back from your microbiology classes and then parenteral which is all other methods of administration besides the GI tract. So for enteral medications one of the most common ones used is PO so by mouth and that depends on several factor the way that the medication is absorbed depends on different factors. So first of all the ability of the GI tract to absorb so any underlying disorders the pH of the stomach remember that it's an acidic environment and so some medications might be absorbed better in an acidic versus an alkaline environment. The food that's present that's why some medications are taken with food and some are better taken without food. Other medications because some might interact with each other in the stomach and they might not be able to permit the second medication to be absorbed as much as we would like it to be available in the body and then also if it's a liquid liquid versus a solid medication so think about any kind of liquid Tylenol for example versus a pill liquid medication is going to be absorbed faster than a pill or a capsule because it doesn't have to be broken down it's readily available. The other enteral medication administration is sublingual or buccal so anything that pertains to the oral mucosa and that absorbs pretty quickly because there's a lot of vascularity in our oral cavity and so medications are absorbed pretty quickly buccal medications I was trying to think of an example unfortunately I couldn't come up with one but sublingual anything from like zoophen or nitroglycerin are used pretty pretty frequently and then there is also the GI system so it can be administered PR per rectum and then per vagina it's not necessarily the GI system but it's also another route besides the other ones and those are those administration routes are reserved for patients who cannot or should not swallow so think about somebody who's actively seizing who might not be able to establish an IV but we want to get some anti-seizure medication on board or a benzodiazepine to halt the seizure so a rectus repository might be indicated and then the other reason patients that shouldn't swallow are maybe somebody who has had a stroke or some sort of head injury that has impaired swallowing so we wouldn't want to give them anything by mouth because that could you know lead to complications of aspiration and so forth and then the other round so par rentarol everything but the GI system we can give medications by the route of inhalation it depends however on the patient's inspiratory effort how deep of a breath are they able to take and how much of the drug are they able to take in through their lungs but it's quickly absorbed through the alveoli so that's a very nice alternative route for some emergency medication specifically and then intradermal or topical medications so anything that pertains to the skin is going to be absorbed a little bit slower primarily topical and intradermal medications have local effects but they might also be absorbed into the systemic circulation and have some some minor or lesser to a lesser degree systemic effects then subcutaneous or intramuscular depends on the medication solubility in water because our bodies consist to the majority of water and so the drug's ability to dissolve in water will depend on how much of it gets absorbed and how quickly so highly soluble medications take about 10 to 30 minutes to absorb where poorly soluble medications take minutes sometimes even hours to be absorbed and then the last but not least IV intravenous route of administration has immediate effects there are no barriers to absorption at all it hits the bloodstream as soon as we push that medication and it is available right away to take the whatever desired effect so thank you for watching this video on pharmacokinetics and the absorption of medications i'll put the link in the description of the video below that refers to the other three steps of pharmacokinetics so you can put all the puzzle pieces together thanks for watching nursing school explain see you soon


Patty, how much money are we up today? Write it in the room. We're going to go over Google here. This is Melissa Arma with the stock swish, and I'm reviewing Google. This is an option trade I called a fantastic call. If I do say so myself, which I very often say, a fantastic call because I called this trade back here on this day. So the stock was actually read on the day, fell on the day, and the trade was still good, and I called it. I called the 9.85 columns. It expired this Friday. It held. Everybody's a different price in this because of the way that I called it before the open, then it fell. And then on Friday, it fell a little bit too. Or no Thursday, I mean. And then Friday, it was green. And then today, it made it over the high. So I'm proud of you for taking this, Patty, because normally you like to buy pullbacks. And I know you missed one or two of the options trades I called since you signed it for the letter because you thought that they weren't going to work because you didn't see what I saw and you didn't do them. You took this trade. You're up in this trade. So good girl for doing this. Now, how much are you up in this trade? You could have got out today. What are you up? You did amazing taking this. I couldn't have fallen to you if you got out today, but what are you up in it? So it went over the strike. It almost went to 9.87. You're doing really good now, Patty. Look at you. You're making money, hand over fist. Galahad, did you get out of this today? Man, if I can turn Patty into a profitable trader, then I can turn anyone into a profitable trader. I'll tell you that right now. Getting here, getting kind of my apartment, and we're going to do a video because if I turn you into a profitable trader in 2017, then anyone, anyone in the plot, it can do it. Galahad, you didn't get out or you did get out? No, you didn't. You did not get out. Galahad is swinging for the fences. Bottom line is that, oh, we lost Patty here. She just got booted from hotcom. Bottom line is that the target is 1,000. So if this goes up to 1,000, I have absolutely no idea what the option will be worth, but that is the target in this, which would be $15 through the strike. You were $2 through the strike in this today.  They made well over 100%. I think one person in the room wrote they made 135%. Bottom line is that I couldn't have faulted you for taking this out today. You could have got out with a little profit on Friday. A nice exit on this today that I couldn't have faulted anyone to get out of it. We lost Patty here, so I don't know what happened or hopefully she'll boot back in the room, but target of this is 1,000. But every day that you're in a trading, you're up, and you're losing time in the option, you don't know exactly when it's going to go there. What if it takes till Friday to go to 1,000? Do I think this is going to happen? I don't know. I have no idea. It could take to the very last day, and then you'll have no time value yet, but you'll be $15 through the strike, so it'll be worth it. Everybody's price in this was anywhere between two and five, I think, in the room. So a lot of different prices in this today because of the way that it was read for those two days and everybody got a different entry. And I don't know where this goes tomorrow, looking at the market here, because I don't know where the market is tomorrow. But Google should have a nice three-day rally or it could rush tomorrow and then continue follow-through on Wednesday. What is today? Monday, yeah. So we'll see. How much money are you up in this gala had into the close? We lost Patty. Anyways, this is a good example, because I'll talk about this even though Patty's not here so she can listen to the video. She didn't do some of the calls that I made because she didn't think that they were gonna work, and then they did. I think she didn't do the baba. I'm not sure the other ones. I think she didn't do the apple, the first apple or the last couple apples. But this worked, so it was a nice call. Why were you up in this today gala had into the close before I go with the video? You know, again, money management. Couldn't have followed you if you take out a half of this. Couldn't have followed you if you got out a half of this. You're looking, you don't even know. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. Any questions from anyone at all? Google was a beautiful, beautiful trade in here. Nice call by me to see it would run up immediately again with no pullback at all. You're up $1,600. Okay, so you could have gotten out of this with half profit and you could have held the rest. You could have done that. You could have bought $800 and you could have held the rest to see where it goes. Oh, you got out a half Friday. Oh, I forgot that you did that. That's right, you did email me that. I don't know why you did that. You did that on your own. Okay. If you wouldn't have gotten out of half of this Friday, you would have been up a crapload of money today. You wouldn't have been up over four grand today. I have no idea why you did that, but you do things all the time that are crazy. If you hadn't gotten out of half of that trade, you would have made over $4,000 today.  You didn't do it. You got scared. All right, looks good though, people. All right, have a good night, everyone. If you have any questions, email me at melissathestoxwish.com. We'll see what Google goes between now and the rest of the week. I think everyone is doing something different than that, although I know a lot of people get out of it this morning. All right, have a good night, everyone. Email me if you'd like a trial of the realm. You're welcome.


Income Tax 2022-2023. American Opportunity Credits. What Expenses Qualify? Let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Most of this information comes from Publication 970, Tax Benefits for Education Taxure 2022. You can find on the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Looking at the Income Tax Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course, each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Formula we're down here at the bottom in the credit area. Remember in the first half of the Income Tax formula is in essence an income statement although it was strange one bottom line being taxable income similar to net income bottom line of a normal income statement. We calculate the tax on the taxable income not using one rate not a flat tax but with the progressive tax system to get to the tax before credits and other taxes and then we get to the credits and other taxes like self-employment tax and then we have the payments which would generally be in the form of estimated tax payments or withholdings to get to the bottom line tax refund or tax due. Also remember that the credits are similar to the deductions in that we like them both however if we could get a dollar credit versus a dollar deduction we would rather have the dollar credit because we typically get the full dollar of benefit whereas the dollar deduction simply deduces or reduces the taxable income by that dollar and the benefit we get will be dependent on our tax rate. Also remember that the credits are broken out between non-refundable and refundable credits the non-refundable credits do not take the tax liability below zero refundable credits or portion of a credit the refundable portion of the credit will take the tax liability below zero making the tax code for that amount more into a benefit or welfare program than a taxing type of system at that point. Okay what expenses qualify we're continuing on with the American Opportunity Credit. The American Opportunity Credit is based on adjusted qualified education expenses you pay for yourself your spouse or dependent you claim on your tax return. So someone goes to school possibly a college for example they're paying for that whoever is claiming that individual likely possibly might qualify for the American Opportunity Credit whether that be the individual themselves or their parents for example or spouse or something like that. Generally the credit is allowed for adjusted qualified education expenses paid in 2022 for an academic period beginning in 2022 or beginning in the first three months of 2023. So we have that cut off we basically are getting the expenses are going to accumulate towards possibly the credit on a cash basis system for the most part although we have that three month item here so that you don't overtake advantage of the of the cutoffs on the tax based or the cash based accounting system. Alright so for example if you paid $1,500 in December 2022 for qualified tuition for the spring 2023 semester beginning January 2023 you can use that $1,500 in figure in your 2022 credit. Academic period what does that mean? An academic period includes a semester, trimester, quarter or other period of study so usually they're pretty straightforward somewhat standardized although different institutions will have different periods so you have to kind of fit this whole thing into what the institution is doing but usually there'll be semester, trimester, quarter or something like that. They also could have a summer school session as reasonably determined by an education institution if an educational institution uses credit hours or clock hours and doesn't have academic terms each payment period can be treated as an academic period. Paid with borrowed funds what if you borrowed the money and paid for the tuition then you can claim an American opportunity credit for qualified education expenses paid with the proceeds of a loan that's kind of different than a grant or something like that if you got money that is going to be free money that you're just using to pay then it's not really an expense to you at that point in time right but if you took out a loan and this is kind of goes back to the whole I compare this to when people take out a loan on their home and often people say that hey look the bank owns 80% of my home but that's not really the case and usually that whole term came about as kind of hyperbole saying the bank actually owns my home but you know that's not the case because the bank cannot sit down at the kitchen table and tell you that you need to paint the bedroom blue because they own 80% of the home no it's only if you default that they have recourse possibly in that situation so it's the similar kind of thing here you would think if you took out a loan in order to pay for the school it's not like well the bank owns my education that's not really the case no you took out a loan in order to then pay that money and you've got to pay the money back to the bank so you would think it would still qualify as an expense because you paid for it you paid for it with borrowed money and you're going to have to pay back the borrowed money and plus the rent on the borrowed money called interest okay so use the expenses to figure the American Opportunity Credit for the year in which the expenses are paid not the year in which the loan is repaid treat loan payments sent directly to the educational institution as paid on the date the institution credits the student's account student withdrawals from classes so you can claim an American Opportunity Credit for qualified education expenses not refunded when a student withdrawals so you're like well what if I backed out what if I well you still paid it and they're not giving your money back so you might be able to still take the credit for the effort there and the money that you spent on the effort qualified education expenses for purposes of the American Opportunity Credit qualified education expenses are tuition and certain related expenses required to enroll or attendance at an eligible education institution so obviously the tuition is pretty straightforward here then it gets kind of messy when you get into certain related expenses could you be more specific could you be more specific on the on that part okay eligible education institution let's start there with that definition an eligible education institution is generally any accredited public non-profit or proprietary privately owned profit making college university vocational school or other post secondary educational institution also the institution must be eligible to participate in a student aid program administrative by the U.S. Department of Education so virtually all accredited post secondary institutions meet this definition so you would think that would generally be the case because education is so expensive these days at these post secondary institutions in part because they've kind of been subsidized in part through kind of the loan type of system so you would think for post secondary institution to survive they would have to be eligible to to take you know these these loans and what not so in any case an eligible educational institution also includes certain educational institutions located outside the United States that are eligible to participate in the student aid program aid administered by the U.S. Department of Education all right related expenses let's get into those what are those obviously the tuition would count you would think what about the related expenses so student actively activity fees are included in qualified education expenses only if the fees must be paid to the institution as a condition of enrollment or attendance so you kind of require to you locked into those ones however expenses for books supplies and equipment needed for a course of study are included in qualified education expenses whether or not here we go with the weather or not the materials are purchased from the educational institution so it's not just the government helping out the public school you know the schools over there you could get an expense even without paying the institution themselves here if it's for materials that are related to the course so once again however this is where the difference kind of lies here however expenses for books supplies and equipment needed for a course of study it's still a little bit vague there what does it exactly mean to be needed you know I needed a jacuzzi so that I can relax so that I can be at my best at my best right I don't think the jacuzzi but you know what I mean still a little vague there a course of study are included in qualified education expenses whether or not the materials are purchased from the educational institution okay prepaid expenses so here we get note we're on a cash based system for the most part meaning you would count the expense you would think when you pay it so if you paid it in 2022 that's when you would count it but you can imagine people trying to take advantage of that kind of system so that they try to mess with the cutoffs by paying for more stuff prepaying for stuff that's going to be further out into the future so qualified education expenses paid in 2022 for an academic period that begins in the first three months of 2023 so there's your cut now you've got this extended cutoff three months so you can't be like paying for stuff this year for like four years out into the future or a year out you only got that three months of 2023 can be used to figure an education credit for 2022 only see academic period earlier for example if you pay $2,000 in December 2022 for qualified tuition for the winter quarter that begins in January 2023 you can use that $2,000 in figuring and education credit for 2022 only if you meet all the other requirements I feel like they're kind of pounding that point home because it is a bit of a confusing one but we've seen some examples let's look at an example see if we can pound at home a little bit further here Jefferson is a sophomore in university V's degree program in the street oh I could probably use one of them but they're scary people sometimes those drills those drill anyways got the chills now I'm going to calm down relax this year in addition to tuition there's a requirement to pay a fee to the university for the rental of dental equipment used in this program so because the equipment rented is needed for this course of study Jefferson's equipment rental fee is a qualified chance well I should hope so that sounds like some expensive rental equipment for that kind of stuff example to grace and William both first year students at college W are required to have certain books and other reading materials to use in their mandatory first year classes right class fear class mystery class so they got the tuition now they're told you have to go buy these books what I need books as well in here alright the college has no policy about how students should obtain these materials but any student who purchased them from college W's bookstore will receive a bill directly from the college William bought the books from a friend grace bought the books at college W's bookstore both I bet the bookstore totally over over charged on those I bet because that's kind of what they do over there I feel like it's kind of scam but any case you might be able to find some used books I think this anyway so both qualified education expenses for the American opportunity credit so both are qualified both are qualified example number three when Kelly enrolled at college X for the freshman for the freshman year the school required payment of a separate student activity fee in addition to the tuition you're like I already signed up and now they want this other fee of course it's like tacking on you know you buy one thing and then they're like whoa you want this add on feature whatever you know to tell me about that before I purchased the first one in the first place trying to think car salesman alright this activity fee is required all students and is used solely to fund on campus organizations and activities run by students such as student newspapers and the student government whatever the portion of the fee covers personal expenses so no portion of the fee covers personal expenses although I labeled a student activity fee the fee is required for Kelly's enrollment and attendance at college X and is qualified expense you would think therefore so no double benefit allows you can't be doing the double dip in type of thing you can't do any of the following these are restricted things from you to do you can't deduct higher education expenses on your income tax return as for example a business expense and also claim the American opportunity credit based on these same expenses so you might be doing the higher education thing and you're trying to say well I'm going to deduct that on my schedule C because it's going to be looking good for my schedule C although you got to be careful there to see whether or not it's something that's going to be a relevant expense for your schedule C or is it something that's going to be separate from your business but if you could do that you could say I'm going to deduct it there well then you can't really double dip and then also take those same expenses and get a credit for it as well that would be you know taking the same you know getting two benefits from the same thing which would be better most possibly the credit oftentimes because you get that dollar for dollar benefit as opposed to if you could get a deduction somewhere else but sometimes there's going to be phase outs for income levels and that kind of stuff so you can test both of them out. Claim an American opportunity credit for any student and use any of that student's expenses in figuring your lifetime learning credit so you can't do that you can't use you can't claim both credits with the same expenses the American opportunity and lifetime learning you got to do one or the other. Figure the tax-free portion of a distribution from a Coverdale Education Savings Account an ESA Qualified Tuition Program QTP using the same expenses you used to figure the American opportunity credits for that one you could see the coordination with the American opportunity and lifetime learning credits in Chapter 6 and the coordination with the American opportunity and lifetime credits Chapter 7 so claim a credit based on qualified education expenses paid with tax-free education existence such as scholarships grant assistance provided by an employer so in these cases this is different than getting a loan if you got a loan you're going to have to pay back the loan unless you got it from the government they're going to wave it at some point which they keep bribing people with and whatnot but if you got a scholarship you don't have to pay back the money for sure so in that case you would think that you wouldn't get the expenses because you got free money that you're not going to have to pay back and then you paid for education expenses or they were paid directly for the education expenses there if your employer provided you money to pay for education expenses they're probably doing so because that money then is not going to be included in box one of your W-2 therefore not subject to federal income taxes and therefore you already got in essence a deduction because it wasn't included in income so you would think that if you use that money you'd be double dipping once again so see adjustments to qualified education expenses next so adjustments to qualified education expenses for each student reduced the qualified education expenses paid by or on behalf of that student under the following rules the result is the amount of adjusted qualified education expenses for each student tax free educational assistance alright so for tax free educational assistance received in 2022 reduced the qualified educational expenses for each academic period by the amount of tax free educational assistance allocable to that academic period so you've got these tuition but you got this tax free stuff already so you already got a tax benefit from it so you got it then reduced so some tax free educational assistance received after 2022 may be treated as a refund of qualified education expenses paid in 2022 that tax free educational assistance is any tax free educational assistance received by you or anyone else after 2022 for qualified education expenses paid on behalf of a student in 2022 or attributable to enrollment at an eligible educational institution during 2022 if the tax free educational assistance is received after 2022 but before you file your 2022 tax return see refunds received after 2022 but before your income tax return is filed later if the tax free educational assistance is received after 2022 and after you file your 2022 income tax return see refunds received after 2022 and after your income tax return is filed later so tax free educational institutions include. Who are these tax-free educational institutions and where can I get some of this tax-free stuff and so that I then have the problem of having to deal with this with relation to my credit. So you got the tax-free parts of scholarships, fellowship grants. So see tax-free scholarships and fellowship grants in chapter one. So you got free money. If the money is free, if you got free money, then you already got a benefit because you got money for free. That was paid to the school. So it's not really an expense to you in that case. The tax-free part of the Pell Grant. See Pell grants in other title four need based education grants in chapter one. You got the employer provided educational assistance. So your employer is giving you money, which again, the reason they would do that is because it goes a little bit further because it would be possibly tax-free, not subject to federal income tax, which is good for both the employee and employer. So you got the veterans educational assistance. See veterans benefit in chapter one. And you've got any other non-taxable tax-free payment other than gifts or inheritance received as educational assistance. Generally, any scholarship or fellowship grant is treated as tax-free. However, a scholarship or fellowship grant isn't treated as tax-free if to the extent the student includes it in gross income. The student may or may not be required to file a tax return for the year the scholarship or fellowship grant is received and either of the following is true. The scholarship or fellowship grant or any part of it must be applied by its item to expenses such as room and board other than qualified education expenses. As defined in qualified education expenses in chapter one, the scholarship or fellowship grant or any part of it may be applied by its terms to expenses such as room and board other than qualified education expenses as defined in qualified education expenses in chapter one. So you've got this broader definition in some cases possibly of what it can be used for as opposed to what we talked about. Notice we didn't talk about room and board as in our case for expenses that can be used for the credit. Alright refunds. A refund of qualified education expenses may reduce adjusted qualified education expenses for the tax year or required repayment or recapture of a credit claimed in an earlier year. Some tax-free educational assistance received after 2022 may be treated as a refund see tax-free educational assistance earlier refunds received in 2022. For each student figure the adjusted qualified education expenses for 2022 by adding all the qualified education expenses for 2022 and subtracting any refunds because obviously if you got a refund then you got the money back of these expenses received from the eligible educational institution during 2022. So for example if you enrolled in a class and then you unenrolled in the class before the cutoff date or whatever and they refunded the money to you, clearly you didn't pay the money in that case and so you'd have to take out the amount that was refunded. Take that into consideration. So refunds received after 2022 but before your income tax return is filed. If anyone receives a refund after 2022 of qualified education expenses paid on behalf of a student in 2022 and the refund is paid before you file an income tax return for 2022, the amount of qualified education expenses for 2022 is reduced. So in other words, let's say you took classes in 2022 but then you dropped out in 2022 before the cutoff date and they're going to give you a refund but they don't give you a refund until next year 2023. But you still haven't filed your tax return in 2023 because you don't have to file to like April whatever of 2023. So the fact that you got the refund in time before you filed the tax return means that you would think you could take that into consideration when counting the expenses, reducing the expenses by the amount that you got refunded in 2023 because you got the refund before you filed the tax return. So refunds received after 2022 and after your income tax return. So now it's like well what if I dropped out in 2022 of some course or whatever and they refunded it in 2023 but I already filed the tax return so I can't reduce 2022 expenses because I already filed unless I have to amend the tax return to do that now. So if anyone received a refund after 2022 of qualified education expenses paid on behalf of a student in 2022 and the refund is paid after you file an income tax return for 2022, you may need to repay some or all of the credit. So that's not good. So see the credit recapture. So we have the recapture credit rules in that case. Credit recapture. So if any tax free educational assistance for the qualified education expenses paid in 2022 or any refund of your qualified education expenses paid in 2022 is received after you file your 2022 return. You must recapture or repay because now you got a benefit. You got a benefit from stuff that you got refunded to you. So you have to and so you got to recapture that part because it cheated or you didn't really cheat. You didn't know but now you know and now you got to fix it. So you do this by figuring the amount of your adjusted qualified education expenses for 2022 by reducing the expenses by the amount of the refund or tax free educational assistance. You then figure your education credits for 2022 and figure the amount by which your 2022 tax liability would have increased if you claim the refunds credit. So in essence, it's kind of like an amended return kind of situation here. You're saying okay it's 2023 now but I can try to figure out the recapture of the credit. How would I do that? Well I can run the tax return having had the full amount that I put in before and then run the tax return having removed the amount that was refunded in 2023 after having filed the return and to see what the difference is in terms of the tax difference. So include this amount as an additional tax for the year the refund or tax free assistance was received. Alright so example that would be helpful. This is a little confusing.  You filed your 2022 tax return on February 17th, 2023 and claimed an American opportunity credit of $2,500 after you filed your return and you received a refund of $4,000. You must figure your 2022 American opportunity credit using $3,000 of the qualified education expenses instead of $7,000. The figured credit is $2,250. The increase to your tax liability is $250. So we basically did the calculation both ways and we can see the difference is the $250. Okay, include the difference of $250 as additional tax on your 2023 tax return. So you had to recalculate your 2022 taxes which is kind of a pain but if you have the tax software you can kind of do that and figure out what the difference is. If you took into account the fact that you got this refund in 2023 and then include the difference in this case $250 of additional tax on your 2023 tax return. See the instructions for your 2023 income tax return to determine where to include this tax. All right, tip. If you pay qualified education expenses in both 2022 and 2023 for an academic period that begins in the first three months of 2023 and you receive tax-free educational assistance or a refund as described above, you may choose to reduce your qualified education expenses for 2023 instead of receiving your expenses for 2022 instead of reducing. So you might, for example, be saying, okay, well, look, if I got a refund for tax year 2022 but I already filed 2022 and now it's 2023, do I really have to go back and fix 2022? What if in 2023 I am also claiming the American Opportunity Credit because I can claim it for four years? Why can't I just, could it be possible that I just adjust the expenses in the current year for the fact that I had the refund that happened in 2023? Possibly that would be a solution but it wouldn't be one that could be applicable to all scenarios because it could be quite possible that you have the educational expenses in 2022 and you don't have them at all in 2023, in which case you would have to then default to running this scenario to figure out what the difference is and so on. Amounts that don't reduce qualified education expenses, don't reduce qualified education expenses by amount paid with funds the students receives as payments for services such as wages. So if you got payments for wages, for example, then it's not like free money, you earn the money and possibly have to report taxes or pay taxes on the wages. A loan, a loan situation isn't the same as a scholarship type of situation because you're going to have to pay back the loan with rent on the money interest typically and therefore you would think you wouldn't have to reduce the expenses by the amount you got for a loan. A gift is kind of similar you might think to a scholarship type of situation that you were gifted money but it's not from like a scholarship that's usually going to be a gift from like a family member or something like that, which is usually not a taxable item such as money from something outside of a gift type of situation is generally often subject to tax unless it's exempt from tax. Inheritance is a similar situation. You might have got free money from an inheritance, but when someone dies, they might have an estate tax that would be subject at the point in time of death to the assets that they have there. So you would think that the inheritance that you receive generally is not is not subject to tax at that at the point in time that you, you know, receive it. So you should be able to do what you want with the inheritance. You would think a withdrawal from the students personal savings. So if you have money in your personal savings account, you wouldn't generally need to reduce the expenses from there because it got in your personal savings account presumably from work that was done or from an inheritance or from from a gift or something like that. So that wouldn't be something that you would think you would reduce the expenses by. Okay, I don't reduce the qualified education expenses by any scholarship or fellowship grant reported as income on the students tax return in the following situations. Now normally if you get this free money from from like a grant or scholarship or something like that, oftentimes it's not subject to income. So the fact that it's not subject to income tax means that you already got like a tax benefit. So you got something and when you receive something, it's going to be subject to income. Usually is the IRS's general rule unless they exempt it. If they exempt it, then you kind of already got a deduction. And if you also take that money into account for doing the credit, then you would be kind of double dipping is the idea in that type of situation. But if you had to include the money as income, then you would think you may be able to get the expenses you paid with that money to be included in the credit. So once again, don't reduce the qualified education expenses by any scholarship or fellowship grant reported as income on the students tax return in the following situations. So the use of the money is restricted by the terms of the scholarship or fellowship grant to costs of attendance, such as room and board other than qualified education expenses as defined in qualified education expenses in chapter one. The use of the money isn't restricted. Okay, example, Joan paid $3,000 for tuition and $5,000 for room and board at University X. The University did not require payment of any fees in addition to the tuition in order to enroll in or attend classes. To help pay these costs, Joan was awarded a $2,000 scholarship and a $4,000 student loan. The terms of the scholarship state that it can be used to pay any of Joan's college expenses. I drifted from university to university. X applies the $2,000 scholarship against Joan's $8,000 total bill and Joan pays the $6,000 balance of her bill from University X with a combination of the student loan and personal savings. Joan doesn't report any portion of the scholarship as income in the tax return. So now she got that free income or the free money that isn't subject to the taxes because it's not being included in income taxes for the scholarship amount, the loan amount she's going to have to repay. Okay, so in figuring the amount of either education credit, American opportunity or lifetime learning, Joan must reduce the qualified education expenses by the amount of the scholarship, the $2,000 because it wasn't, you already got a tax benefit from it by not being included in income because the entire scholarship was excluded from reported in income and Joan's tax return. The student loan isn't tax free educational assistance, so the qualified expenses don't need to be reduced by any part of the loan proceeds. You might be saying, well, the loan wasn't included in income either. It wasn't. Of course, it's not an income because it's not income because you're going to have to repay the loan plus interest. So that's why it's not. So Joan is treated as having paid $1,000 in qualified education expenses, $3,000 tuition minus the $2,000 scholarship. Okay, example two, the facts are the same as an example one, except that Joan reports the entire scholarship as income on the tax return. So now she didn't get that tax exempt status. She got that money. It's free money, but subject to taxes. So she already got hit with the taxes because Joan reports the entire 2000 scholarship as income. The qualified education expenses don't need to be reduced. Joan is treated as having paid $3,000 in qualified education expenses. All right, we got the coordination with the Pell grants and other scholarships. So you may be able to increase your American opportunity credit when the student, you, your spouse, your dependent includes certain scholarships or fellowship grants in the student's gross income. Your credit may increase only if the amount of the student's qualified education expenses minus the total amount of scholarship and fellowship grants is less than $4,000. If this situation applies, consider including some or all of the scholarship or fellowship grants and the student's income in order to treat the included amount as paying non qualified expenses instead of qualified education expenses. So note, when you looked at that last example, you might be thinking, well, hey, wait a second. If I got them, if I had a choice, if I've got this money and and I can include it in income, if I included an income, that's usually bad. But, but it's only, it's only if I get, if I don't include it in income, it's only a deduction as opposed to the credit situation. And with the credit would be better than the deduction. If I get a dollar for dollar credit versus the deduction, which is going to be reducing the taxable income. So you would imagine in some cases you might be saying, well, hey, wait, I would rather include it in income if I have an option to in some cases because the credit might outweigh the amount of benefit you can get from the deduction, which they were trying to give a tax benefit from by not having to include it in income. But the credit kind of confuses the whole situation sometimes. So non qualified expenses are expenses such as room and board that aren't qualified expenses such as tuition and related fees. So scholarships and fellowship grants are grants that the student includes in income. Don't reduce the students qualified education expenses available to figure your American opportunity credit. Including enough scholarship or fellowship grant in the student's income to report up to $4,000 in qualified education expenses for the American opportunity credit may increase the credit by enough to increase your tax refund or reduce the amount of tax you owe, even considering any increased liability from the additional income. So you're going to get a bigger benefit from the credit than you would from not including it in income, which is equivalent to like a deduction. Credit's being better than deductions, although there's limits to it because there's limit on how much you can claim on the credit and so on. However, the increase in the tax liability as well as the loss of other tax credits may be greater than the additional American opportunity credit and may cause your tax refund to decrease or the amount of tax you owe to increase. So there's other factors that could be involved because now you're adjusting the adjusted gross income, the AGI. And that means that other tax things that are related on the phase out of your AGI will be negatively affected if you have a higher AGI oftentimes. So your specific circumstances will determine what amount, if any, I'm losing my voice. Hold on, I need some coffee. I'm back. This is a long one. Your qualified circumstances will determine what amount, if any, of qualified or fellowship grant to include in income to maximize your tax refund or minimize the amount of your tax owed. So the scholarship or fellowship grant must be one that may qualify a tax free scholarship under the rules discussed in chapter one. Also the scholarship or fellowship grant must be one that may be, by its terms, be used for non qualified expenses. Finally, the amount of the scholarship or fellowship grant that is applied to non qualified, qualified expenses can't exceed the amount of the students actual non qualified expenses that are paid in the tax year. This amount may differ from students living expenses estimated by the students school and figuring the official cost of attendance under student aid rules. The fact that the educational institution applies the scholarship or fellowship grant to qualified education expenses such as tuition and related fees doesn't prevent the student from choosing to apply certain scholarship or fellowship grants to the students actual non qualified expenses. By making this choice, that is, by including the part of the scholarship or fellowship grant applied to the students non qualified expenses in income, the student may increase taxable income and may be required to file a tax return. But this allows the payment made in cash by check by credit card with borrowed funds such as a student loan to be applied to qualified education expenses. Alright, example, no scholarship. So Bill, age 28, unmarried, enrolled full time in 2022 as a first year student at a local college to earn a degree in law enforcement. This was Bill's first year, tough career these days. This was Bill's first year of post-secondary education. During 2022, Bill paid $5,600 for qualified education expenses of $4,400 for room and board for the fall 2022 semester. Bill and the college met all the requirements for the American Opportunity Credit. Bill's adjusted gross income, AGI and MAGI, modified adjusted gross income for purposes of figuring this credit are $36,450. Bill claimed the standard deduction $12,950 resulting in taxable income of $23,500 and an income tax liability before credits of $2,618. So that's the tax liability before we get to the credits. Bill claims no credits other than the American Opportunity Credit. So we're not going to muddy up the field with child tax credits and earned income credits and whatnot. Bill figures his American Opportunity Credit based on qualified education expenses of $4,000 which results in a credit of $2,500 and a tax liability after credit of $118. Let's do another one. Number two, scholarship included from, excluded from income. So you got some free money, not included for income. So the facts are the same as example one, no scholarship except that Bill was awarded $5,600 scholarship. So you got a scholarship this time. Under the terms of the scholarship, it may be used to pay any educational expenses including room and board. If Bill excludes the scholarship from income, it will be deemed for purposes of figuring the education credit to have been applied to pay tuition, required fees and course material. Bill's adjusted qualified education expenses would be zero and there would be no education credit. Therefore, Bill's tax liability after credits would be $2,618. So now he got that free money and basically it wasn't included in income. So he would have to reduce his expenses by that amount wiping out the amount that he would be able to include in the credit, not taking the credit. In that case, you might be saying, hey, look, wouldn't it be better for Bill to include it in income if he could, if he had the choice so that he can get the credit, because the credit might be worth more than not including it in income, which would be similar to a deduction. So example three, scholarship partially included in income. So the facts are the same as example two, scholarship excluded from income. If unlike example two, Bill includes 4,000 of the scholarship in income, the 4,000 will be deemed to have been applied to pay for room and board. The remaining 1,600 of the 5,600 scholarship would reduce the qualified education expenses and the adjusted qualified education expenses would be $4,000. Bill's AGI and modified AGI, adjusted gross income, would increase to $40,450. The taxable income would increase to $27,500 because now he included more income from part of the scholarship. And the tax liability before credit would be $3,998. Based on the adjusted qualified education expenses of $4,000, Bill would be able to claim an American Opportunity Credit of $2,500. Boom! And the tax liability after the credits would be $5,998. Okay, example four, scholarship applied by the post-secondary school to tuition. So the facts are the same as in example three, scholarship partially included in income, except the 5,600 scholarship is paid directly to the local college. The fact that the local college applies the scholarship to Bill's tuition and related fees doesn't prevent Bill from including 4,000 of the scholarship in income. As in example three, by doing so Bill would be deemed to have applied 4,000 to pay for room and board. Bill would be able to claim the American Opportunity Credit of $2,500 and the tax liability after credit would be $5,98. Whoo! Expenses that don't qualify. What doesn't qualify then? Qualified education expenses don't include amounts paid for insurance, medical expenses, including student health. But I know it's a stressful situation, but you don't get to deduct your health benefits or any coffee or anything. Room and board. So it doesn't include the room and board. Transportation or similar personal living or family expenses. This is true even if the amount must be paid to the institution as a condition of enrollment or attendance. Sports, games, hobbies and non-credit courses. Qualified education expenses generally don't include expenses that relate to any course of instruction or other education that involves sports, games or hobbies or any non- This isn't for recreation here people. This isn't recreation. You can deduct your bowling class. However, if the course of instruction or other education is part of a student's degree program, these expenses can qualify. Ha! The bowling class was part of my counting towards my degree program. Comprehensive or bundle fees. Some eligible educational institutions combine all of their fees for the academic period into one amount If you don't receive or don't have access to the allocation showing how much you paid for qualified education expenses and how much you paid for personal expenses such as those listed earlier, contact the institution. So you might say, hey look I paid a bundle and some of it included some of the stuff like room and board and whatnot. So you're going to contact the institution and say, hey look I need to break this stuff out. Institutions should know this because you would think they'd get that question a lot if they don't properly break up bundles so that people can calculate the education expenses. The institution is generally required to make this allocation and provide you with the amount you paid for qualified education expenses on form 1098T See figure in the credit later for more information about form 1098T.