Employers of people who bicycle to work stand to gain a $20 per month tax credit per cycling employee, according to the Senate’s version of the Wall Street bailout bill, H.R. 1424.

The bill passed yesterday by a vote of 74 for and 25 against the bill and now goes to the House for a vote. The bicycle tax provision was part of an additional $110 billion in line items added to the already $700 billion bailout package.

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Senate Bailout Bill… to Benefit Bikers for $20/mo?

Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough — four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you’re a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.

The merits of a CPA-like certification exam apply to any college major for which the BA is now used as a job qualification. To name just some of them: criminal justice, social work, public administration and the many separate majors under the headings of business, computer science and education. Such majors accounted for almost two-thirds of the bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2005. For that matter, certification tests can be used for purely academic disciplines. Why not present graduate schools with certifications in microbiology or economics — and who cares if the applicants passed the exam after studying in the local public library?

Can’t agree more. The only value of an elite college is that of the contacts one makes. The quality of the education is not superior to a state university.

The IRS said the scheme usually works by the victim paying the scam operator a fee for preparation of a false refund claim and possibly a percentage of any refund received. This hoax fleeces the victims for the up-front preparation fee. Plus, the law does not allow such a refund of Social Security taxes paid, so participants could be subject to a penalty for filing a false tax return.

“The IRS is very concerned that some people in the metro Atlanta area have fallen for this scam,” said IRS spokesman Mark Green. “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Getting a refund of Social Security taxes is generally not an option and, in this case, it’s not legal.”

The federal government discovered the scam when workers in the Atlanta IRS office noticed several people coming in and asking for copies of their Social Security income statements. When questioned, some of the people explained a person was preparing refund claims for them.

The IRS said it is still gathering information and working to stop the scam. But taxpayers who got a refund from one of the false claims before the scam was detected must return the funds. If they have cashed the check, the IRS said it will usually work with them to arrange an immediate return of the funds.