If the federal government revoked Harvard’s tax-exempt status — a move experts say would be legally dubious — Harvard would find itself in uncharted territory. Harvard has never operated as a for-profit entity.
While tuition would be taxed as revenue, the university could deduct expenses like faculty and staff salaries and other operating costs. But one big hit could come in the form of donations to the university, which would become taxable.
Harvard’s loss of tax-exempt status “would reduce the number of donors, the amount that donors gave, or both,” Samuel D. Brunson, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago who studies nonprofit organizations, said in an email.
It's time to make Harvard a for profit business.
