Not paying their fair share.
Via Campus Reform:
A new report reveals that Ivy League universities are raking in billions in tax breaks on their endowments, bolstering those Republicans pushing to end the free ride.
In a report released Wednesday called Ivy League Inc., government watchdog group OpenTheBooks reports that the combined endowments of the eight Ivy League universities amounted to $119 billion in 2015, enough to provide every undergraduate students with a full-ride scholarship for the next 51 years without adding a single cent from donations or investment income.
As non-profit educational institutions, of course, the Ivy League schools are not required to pay taxes on income from their endowments, amounting to “a $9.6 billion tax break on the $27.3 billion growth of their endowment funds” between FY2011 and FY2015.
In addition, the Ivy League received $25.73 billion in federal payments over the same period, resulting in a total cost to federal taxpayers of $41.59 billion over the course of just six years.
Significantly, the report indicates that the eight colleges in the Ivy League “received more money ($4.31 billion)–on average–annually from the federal government than [did] sixteen states.”
Some Republicans had begun to express disgust with this state of affairs even before the latest report, fueling speculation that the tax breaks will be among the items addressed by Congress as part of a larger tax reform package.