Tacos and tuition? Burgers for bachelor’s degrees? It’s very possible if you work at Chipotle or McDonald’s, two companies that announced college tuition benefits for their workers in the last decade.
Employer-sponsored education assistance is not a new perk. Tax benefits to employers offering education assistance programs have been available under Section §127 of the federal tax code since 1978, allowing employers to annually deduct from their taxable gross income up to $5,250 in education assistance per employee, covering costs like tuition, fees, and books.
However, these provisions were only temporarily renewed every five years until the Obama administration made them permanent in the tax code in 2012. An update in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act makes the $5,250 benefit inflation-adjusted starting in 2026. Employers can also continue to offer tax-free student loan repayment assistance under a §127-qualified educational assistance program, a provision now made permanent under OBBBA.
Read more at Brookings.
