US: Colleges as potential tax targets

The US Internal Revenue Service is focusing mostly on issues related to executive compensation and payment (or non-payment) of tax on unrelated business income in more than 30 reviews it is conducting of individual colleges and universities, the agency said as it released the preliminary results of its survey of 400 institutions, writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed.

The interim report issued on 7 May offered the first official look at the information the federal tax agency has collected from a wide-ranging questionnaire it sent to colleges in 2008 to gauge their compliance with tax laws and identify possible areas for further examination (and enforcement, of course). The IRS focused on higher education, the agency said, because "colleges and universities make up one of the largest non-profit segments in terms of revenue and assets" - and that status has made it a target for members of Congress and others in the federal government at a time of ever-tightening federal budgets.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site