for their antisemitism antics that we watched unfold on national TV Trump says he’ll revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status
Violating federal law again? 26 U.S. Code § 7217 - Prohibition on executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations (a)Prohibition It shall be unlawful for any applicable person to request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer. (b)Reporting requirement Any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service receiving any request prohibited by subsection (a) shall report the receipt of such request to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. (e)Applicable personFor purposes of this section, the term “applicable person” means— (1)the President, the Vice President, any employee of the executive office of the President, and any employee of the executive office of the Vice President; and section 5312 of title 5, United States Code. 26 U.S. Code § 7217 - Prohibition on executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations
The Trump adminstration seems to walk a fine line on this topic and a violation of 26 USTC 7217. A. It will come out when the IRS examination started. Someone with be on the stand having to state that the executive branch did not violate Sec 7217. Harvard is going to hit this hard. B. The IRS needs to show that the tax exempt status of Harvard was violated. Generally there are 6 key items: 1) private benefit 2) lobbying 3) political activity 4) unrelated business income 5) annual reporting 6) operation within stated purpose Harvard knows Trump wants the endowment piggy bank. Follow the money. All the churches across America are about to get a big dose of reality. If Harvard goes down, churches in America will be on a hot seat. Good luck to the Catholics and Mormons. Globally coordinated churches will extract assets out of the US very quickly.
Remember when Republicans were so angry about Executive overreach under Obama when the IRS seemingly (but not actually) targeted the tax exempt status of some Tea Party organizations?
Can the president really announce some entity has lost its tax exempt status over a political disagreement? Im pretty sure their qualification for tax exempt status would be set in this little thing we call “laws”…. Also, remember when Obama took heat because IRS looked into Tea Party and Occupy groups tax status?… and republicans thought it was bad, politically motivated, and illegal….
Remember what goes around comes around. While I seriously doubt that Trump will get away with revoking Harvard's tax exempt status, if he does it's not beyond the realm of possibility that a liberal Democratic President could decide to revoke the tax exempt status of Hillsdale College, Regent University or Liberty University just to name a few right-leaning colleges.
Don't know if this is accurate or not since for rather obvious reasons the university will neither confirm nor deny it although considering Trump's penchant for retribution I wouldn't doubt it.
Some (unproven) smoke out there that Columbia refused young Trump as well. Wasn’t Columbia singled out as well? Nah…couldn’t be true..
Bill, how will you like this when the next liberal potus tried to take our churches tax exempt status for teaching scripture? This is a really stupid can of worms to open up.
