Trump says Harvard will lose tax exempt status | Hacker News Reader

Trump says Harvard will lose tax exempt status

bloomberg.com

21 pointskarma_daemon18 comments

I question whether Trump has the legitimate legal authority to decide the taxable status of specific institutions. If he wants to change the rules about what qualifies for tax-exempt status, that takes an act of Congress (which he can probably get, eventually).

What he can do is tell the IRS to go through the existing rules and find a reason why Harvard doesn't qualify for tax-exempt status. The problems will be that, first, whatever the reason given will be, it will head for a court case, and second, it will be almost impossible to interpret the rules so that the new interpretation hits Harvard only (and not, say, the other Ivy League schools).

This is just one of those things he says to appeal to his base. Nothing will come out of it.

I think actual firings, funding cuts, contract cuts, programs ending have already occurred regardless of how legal the acts that caused them to occur they are.

> What he can do is tell the IRS to go through the existing rules and find a reason why Harvard doesn't qualify for tax-exempt status.

No. Even this is illegal. There's specific legislation about this, which explicitly covers the president. The president is not allowed to tell anybody at the IRS to investigate any individual person or organization.

I would love for you to be right. Can you point me to the ruling/precedent/statute that covers this?

It's 26 USC § 7217: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7217. However with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States ruling it is, I guess, unprosecutable?

What prevents them from instead justifying tax-exempt status as a faith-based nonprofit for their FSM-related charitable work, say?

I think that assumes that there's some fair evaluating of tax status going on.

Harvard defied Trump and that's why they're making this push. I don't think any given argument to the feds will change that math.

If you work for the feds, I think you know that if you were to follow a process and find that Harvard should retain their tax exempt status then you won't have a job long.

Is Wharton a religious school though? Do they sell nonprofit branded religious texts with their brand on it?

Harvard does a great job at making really good graduates who go on to do great things.

Harvard who doesnt control their grads go on to become supreme court justices and other politically appointed positions.

Harvard takes blame?

Now they are digging deep to find other reasons to attack harvard?

Havard made the line go up and the living standards on avg go down. The scissor they made, it came for thee..

Can you explain what that means?

It educated the elite that determinated economic policy consensus left and right overlapping , the elite deteriorated the industrial base and the middle class, thus a anti-elite was voted in to carry them out .

The scissor between productivity and wages created the force that cut the economic roots of the institution.

>thus a anti-elite was voted in to carry them out .

Trump? Trump is the elite, how could anyone come to a conclusion otherwise?

There's no ideology at play with Trump, it's just another elite extracting what they can from anyone who doesn't do what they demand.

Wealth and class are different dimensions. Though correlated, especially in the USA which lacks a formal institutionalized gentry, just having a lot of money isn’t enough to be of the elite, high class.

I don't see why not.

And even if not, the man has been president twice, now deciding unilaterally who can or can not get taxpayer funds, handing out pardons to rich friends / donors, free passes for big companies who ask for it.

It amazes me folks fall for that guy's populist advertisements, Trump is the elite in spades.

Make no mistake, no matter what you think of Harvard and it's grads, if Harvard submits, Trump will support them....

When a person has the elite kissing their ring and throwing money at them for an audience, it puts that person, wealthy/poor/classless or otherwise, in with -- if not at the apex of -- the elite.

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