Forcing some of America's richest and most successful enterprises to pay more in taxes would have once, for Republicans, been tantamount to treason. But when those enterprises are left-leaning universities, all bets are off. As part of its attack against elite universities, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding for Columbia and Harvard, and has announced a scheme to revoke Harvard's nonprofit tax-exempt status. Now congressional Republicans are considering a move that would have even bigger long-term consequences for higher education: imposing a steep tax on university endowments. Historically, nonprofit universities were exempt from federal taxation. As part of the 2017 tax cut, Congress imposed a levy on the annual investment income that the richest universities generate from their endowments, but it was set at a trivial 1.4 percent. This year, Republicans will very likely include an endowment-tax hike in their larger, must-pass reconciliation...
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