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The GOP Tax Bill Will Hurt U.S. Universities (taxes endowments)
politico.com ^ | 12/1/17 | Douglas A. Warner

Posted on 12/01/2017 2:53:23 PM PST by cotton1706

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To: BookmanTheJanitor

How about 14% on all endowments above ZERO? Tax everything. Practice what your preach.


21 posted on 12/01/2017 3:51:58 PM PST by who knows what evil? (Yehovah saved more animals than people on the ark...www.siameserescue.com)
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To: cotton1706

From Boston talker/columnist Howie Carr a few weeks ago: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2017/11/carr_whiny_ivies_apoplectic_over_tax


22 posted on 12/01/2017 4:06:34 PM PST by Calvin Locke
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To: Soul of the South

“It is also time to start taxing private foundations. The Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, George Soros’s foundation and many others spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year on social justice work targeted at destroying the republic and western civilization. The work of these “nonprofits” should not be supported by the taxpayer through the tax code.”

did you forget the former Clinton Foundation and its tentacles, and the latest Obama foundation?


23 posted on 12/01/2017 4:07:02 PM PST by IWONDR
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To: cotton1706

.
This is absolutely a good thing!

The endowing fool should have to pay the tax.
.


24 posted on 12/01/2017 4:09:10 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: Fantasywriter

“Good. Liberals love taxes. This should have them in ecstasy.”

it appears from the latest House and Senate tax proposals that the GOP love taxes, as well, primarily on the middle class.

It’s interesting to me that i haven’t heard one congress critter oppose this bill on the grounds of its evisceration of the middle class. where are the folks that we elected to represent us? oh, that’s right, we are only given lip service at re-election time.

the elimination of most of the itemized deductions should be a deal killer to all those of our duly elected to represent us who vote them into office, and not as thank you gifts to those corporations who donate the fattest envelopes to their re-election campaigns.

so just as the cost of obamacare was being shouldered by all the healthy young people who had to sign up or pay a fine, this tax bill is being paid for by the average middle class taxpayer for the benefit of big permanent tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Touting this as a tax cut to all the middle class deplorables who elected Trump is the same as obama promising that you would save $2500 on your insurance premiums and could keep your doctor. This isn’t a tax cut, but a tax increase for the average American.

the standard deduction is being not quite doubled, but then they are eliminating the individual personal exemptions for yourself, your spouse and your dependents. so they give with one hand but take away with the other. in addition, they are eliminating the extra deduction for those over 65 or blind.

if you take the standard deduction, you cannot then itemize; therefore, giving up the normal deductions for medical expenses, long term care insurance expenses, state and local taxes, property taxes [under the senate bill], mortgage interest deduction limits, student loan interest deductions, moving expenses, alimony, dependent care assistance accounts, casualty and theft losses, unreimbursed job expenses and tax preparation fees.

further details about this “wonderful” tax grab:

Exclusions and exemptions. The measure would repeal personal and dependency exemptions (which is $4,050 per individual in 2017), exclusions for employee achievement awards, employer education assistance, qualified tuition programs, dependent care assistance, qualified moving reimbursements, and adoption assistance. Contribution to Coverdell education savings accounts would be barred, but funds in existing accounts could be rolled over to 529 plans.

Deductions.
Certain deductions from gross income as well as itemized deductions would be eliminated. Deductions from gross income set to be axed include the alimony deduction (for divorce or separation agreements entered into after Dec. 31, 2017, student loan interest (although the Senate version would retain this deduction), interest on U.S. savings bonds redeemed for higher education, the moving expense deduction, the deduction for contributions to Archer medical savings accounts, out-of-pocket educator expenses, and expenses of performing artists and certain government officials.
Itemized deductions on the chopping block include the medical expense deduction, state and local income or sales taxes, the casualty and theft loss deduction (except for casualty losses in federally-declared disaster areas), and miscellaneous itemized deductions for tax return preparation and unreimbursed employee business expenses.

Tax credits.
The bill would repeal the credit for the elderly and permanently disabled, the credit for mortgage certificates, and the credit for plug-in electric vehicles. The bill would eliminate the lifetime learning credit by consolidating it into the American opportunity credit. The credit would be available for five years of higher education (instead of four years), but the amount in the fifth year would half the usual maximum (including the amount eligible for the 40 percent refundable portion of the credit).

Now look at its impact on the economic strata of taxpayers to see who benefits the most:

“...the highest-income taxpayers (0.1 percent of the population, or those with incomes over $3.7 million in 2016 dollars) would experience an average tax cut of nearly $1.1 million, over 14 percent of after-tax income. Households in the middle fifth of the income distribution would receive an average tax cut of $ 1,010, or 1.8 percent of after-tax income, while the poorest fifth of households would see their taxes go down an average of $110, or 0.8 percent of their after-tax income.”


25 posted on 12/01/2017 4:11:42 PM PST by IWONDR
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To: cotton1706

They must have endowments exceeding 250 thousand per student. That’s very few schools. Besides, it means they are hoarding scholarship money and research money and relying on government money for gramts & research. Keep theirs and spend ours.


26 posted on 12/01/2017 4:15:31 PM PST by xzins (Retired US Army chaplain. Support our troops by praying for their victory.)
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To: cotton1706
The 70 or so institutions targeted by the proposed tax are among the most . . .

anti-American, depraved, left-wing indoctrination institutions in the world.

This tax is a great idea!

27 posted on 12/01/2017 4:18:39 PM PST by T Ruth (Mohammedanism shall be defeated.)
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To: cotton1706; All
Given that many U.S. universities are better thought of as entitlement indoctrination centers that unthinkingly promote the unconstitutional expansion of the already unconstitutionally big federal government's powers, please consider the following.

If universities were actually teaching the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understand, then they'd be able to argue the following to keep the corrupt feds out of their bank accounts.

Regardless that there are all kinds of federal banking laws, patriots are reminded that Thomas Jefferson had noted that, although the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had considered giving the feds the specific power to regulate banks, they had decided not to.

“A proposition was made to them to authorize Congress to open canals, and an amendatory one to empower them to incorporate. But the whole was rejected, and one of the reasons for rejection urged in debate was, that then they would have a power to erect a bank, which would render the great cities, where there were prejudices and jealousies on the subject, adverse to the reception of the Constitution [emphasis added].” —Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791.

Also, when Jefferson was later POTUS, he had officially indicated that neither had the Founding States expressly constitutionally given the feds the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes, something that the states have still never done.

"On a few articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers [emphases added]"—Thomas Jefferson : Sixth Annual Message to Congress

In fact, previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had clarified that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, the powers to regulate banking and schooling not among those powers as previously shown.

So since the "blind leading the blind" universities aren't teaching the fed's constitutionally limited powers, it's no surprise that universities are unable to protect themselves from unconstitutional federal overreach where taxes are concerned.

In fact, note that vote-winning federal funding, which so many universities are evidently addicted to, are arguably state revenues which the corrupt feds steal from the states by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.

In other words, if the states would wise up and eliminate the unconstitutional federal middleman from their revenue management, the states would be able to better support their schools.

Also, consider that it was the twisted interpretation of the Commerce Clause (1.8.3) in Wickard v. Filburn by FDR's state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices that gave the feds the politically correct excuse to stick their big noses into state affairs.

The remedy …

Patriots need to finish the job that they started in the 2016 elections by electing Trump president.

More specifically, patriots now need to be making sure that there are plenty of state sovereignty-respecting, Trump-supporting patriot candidates on the 2018 primary ballots and pink-slip career lawmakers by sending patriot candidate lawmakers to D.C. on election day.

Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!

28 posted on 12/01/2017 4:25:16 PM PST by Amendment10
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To: trublu

Local banks should be the ones to grant student loans. They know the parents & the family. The interest on these loans should stay in the local community, also.

Since the Feds under Obama took over all the student loans, the errors are rampant.

A friend is still paying her student loans & it is automatically taken out of her bank account. More than once she has received notices that she is delinquent in her payments.....when they are demanding as many as 5 ‘missing payments’. She could prove that the money WAS taken out of her bank account & done so timely. The institution which was supposed to get/record those payments kept telling her that SHE had to prove that THEY had received the money.

After many hours spent with a bank officer & the ‘receiving institution, she got it straightened out....but this happened more than once. It took her away from her business for hours at a time. She told me that IF she didn’t have her bank account at the local bank for over 30 years, she doubts that she could have gotten it straightened out. The local bank officer was in her corner & spent hours working this all out. Turned out the receiving institution was too lazy to properly record the payments, so thousands of payments were in ‘Suspense’ accounts. That is an accounting method of posting something to balance your books, but you don’t have monies posted correctly to individual accounts.

She only had these problems AFTER the Feds took over the student loans. IF I ever hit the Lottery, I will arrange with her to pay off her student loans & she can repay ME.


29 posted on 12/01/2017 5:04:52 PM PST by ridesthemiles (uen)
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To: trublu

Apply the same standards to public and private colleges and universities that are applied to commercial for profit schools .... same requirement for 95% + employment for graduates, ability to sue for worthless degrees, institution to reimburse lenders for failed graduates, etc.


30 posted on 12/01/2017 5:18:13 PM PST by RetiredTexasVet (Start using cash and checks or the elite class and bankers will make "cashless" the norm.)
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To: Vigilanteman

It is not a tax on the endowments - it is only a tax on the income generated by the endowments.


31 posted on 12/01/2017 5:41:31 PM PST by Stingray51
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To: cotton1706

Has he been reading my Christmas wish list?????
Outstanding!!!


32 posted on 12/01/2017 5:47:08 PM PST by Revolutionary ("Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!")
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To: cotton1706

Universities charge outrageous tuition, get taxpayer monies, and take in grants.

Tax them! They are no longer non-profits.


33 posted on 12/01/2017 6:51:54 PM PST by CodeToad (CWII is coming. Arm Up! They Are!)
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To: cotton1706
Wow. IT TAXES ENDOWMENTS? Really? 😊😊😊😊
34 posted on 12/01/2017 6:58:34 PM PST by Mamzelle
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To: IWONDR

All I can say is just to keep on voting against incumbents. Agree that DC is a mess. It won’t get better unless and until we vote at least a few of them out. Things temporarily improved when Cantor lost. Congress needs some fresh object lessons in 2018.


35 posted on 12/01/2017 8:24:39 PM PST by Fantasywriter (Any attempt to do forensic work using Inernet artifacts is fraught with pitfalls. JoeProbono)
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To: cotton1706

Given the harm they do to the country, most secular universities should be shut down and their endowments confiscated.

After that, their assets could be sold off to for-profit operators like University of Phoenix, Premier Education Group or DeVry University. Those institutions are the future of higher education. They are very job-oriented. Very little, if an “liberal arts” in any of them. No indoctrination, just the things you need to know to get a job. Most of the classes are taught by adjuncts who work in the real world not egghead, commie, atheist PhDs.


36 posted on 12/01/2017 8:27:22 PM PST by GodAndCountryFirst
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To: xzins

The tax bill makes the rich richer, that’s your objection? Look, at this point we have one guy worth around $100 billion.

But before the liberals started their 100-year tax binge, we had people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who, in today’s dollars, would be worth more than $350 billion each. Henry Ford, and Cornelius Vanderbilt today would be worth $200 billion each. John Jacob Astor, who built America’s first big fortune, would have been worth about $150 billion today.

Fortunes like that built America. If not for liberal meddling, we’d still have men with that kind of wealth — or more. We might even have a few trillionaires by now.

Instead, we confiscate money so congress critter can buy votes by giving tax breaks to help authorities workers buy houses, creating, an unconstitutional old-age pension scheme and doling out handouts to reward the truly unproductive with cash, free food, free medical care and other goodies. Is it any wonder that so few people bother to build big companies anymore? Or that some people choose not to work?

We need to restore the balance that made the American economy soar in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We need to start rewarding enterprise and punishing sloth once again,not vice-versa. Make the rich richer? Absolutely!


37 posted on 12/01/2017 9:26:15 PM PST by GodAndCountryFirst
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