The new tax bill includes a 1.4 percent excise tax on investment income at private colleges with an enrollment of at least 500 students and with assets valued at $500,000 per full-time student. It appears that the new tax will apply to the following schools:
Liberal arts colleges (12 total):
Pomona College
Amherst College
Swarthmore College
Grinnell College
Williams College
Wellesley College
Washington and Lee University
Bowdoin College
University of Richmond
Smith College
Bryn Mawr College
Claremont McKenna College
Ivies (4 total):
Princeton University
Yale University
Harvard University
Dartmouth College
Other universities (10 total):
Stanford University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
Rice University
Cooper Union
University of Notre Dame
Emory University
Washington University in St. Louis
University of Chicago
Trinity University (Texas)
Specialized schools (5 total):
Princeton Theological Seminary
The Juilliard School
Medical College of Wisconsin
Baylor College of Medicine
Icahn School at Mt. Sinai
Well at least they removed Berea…
All in all what I notice is that, outside the specialized schools, those are the colleges with the best financial aid and the most generous packages for the first 20 of these.
Yes, some schools are surprisingly missing (Davidson is another one I noticed, 4 Ivies). But all in all, I don’t see how this new tax won’t impact scholarships or financial aid generosity at all these schools.
Then look up the current full-time enrollment. If it’s over 500, divide the endowment value by the enrollment. If the result is $500,000 or more, then a school should be subject to the tax.
For the other schools mentioned above, I get:
Vanderbilt: $3.82 billion endowment / 11,834 full-time enrollment = $323,000
Cornell: $5.76 billion / 21,904 = $263,000
Davidson: $662 million / 1,950 = $339,000
So these schools are apparently not at the $500,000+ level that would make them subject to the new tax.
Didn’t they have to remove the exemption for colleges with fewer than 500 because of the Byrd rule? That was supposed to cause colleges like Hillsdale and a number of very small religious colleges to pay the excise tax.
EDIT: Oops, Hillsdale is below $500K/student. They were caught if the limit was $250K/student and the exemption was going to be based on them not accepting federal funds.
Lazy analysis when many schools have already released 2107 Fiscal Year (June 30, 207) endowment totals.
Question as to what date they will be pegging as 2017 stock market gains will cause more to be snared - as an example, Hamilton is likely in the bet given endowment totaled $954,700,000 or ~$486,000 as of June 30, 2017 https://www.hamilton.edu/about/just-the-facts.
@Corbett [quoting a Harvard study]The tax’s design is also problematic, said [Harvard economics professor John Y. Campbell], because it can distort the behavior of institutions hovering close to the tax threshold. Those with 498 students instead of 500, for example, pay no tax, nor do those whose investment assets total $499,900 per student instead of $500,000. That creates a perverse incentive for institutional leaders to work to avoid paying the tax that policymakers didn’t anticipate.
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Unless, it creates a perverse kind of status envy:
@circuitrider, can’t imagine that any school would be envious in having to deny a certain number of demonstrated need based aid applicants as a result of the 1.4% excise tax…Yes, I think those that can will try to avoid the tax, but of course none will stop investing or increase spending, outside of bringing forward capital spending, to do so.
It would not, of course, be feasible for most of the affected schools to cut their enrollment to less than 500 full-time students. But Princeton Theological Seminary (which has no official connection to Princeton University) has to be thinking hard about this option. They currently have about 550 students, and are easily wealthy enough to be subject to the tax. PTS was already considering a plan to reduce enrollment, and now this would make even more sense.
Conversely, Soka enrolled 432 students in Fall 2016. They might like to grow, and with a $1 billion endowment, they have the financial resources to do it. However, if they hit the 500 enrollment mark, the tax will immediately kick in. They are already way above the financial threshold; they are only exempt from the tax because of their small size.
Just to be clear, I don’t think there are many schools, besides the 31 listed originally, that would potentially be subject to the endowment tax at this time. Duke and Penn should probably be included, Hamilton appears to be very close, and Soka would be included if their enrollment reached 500. Middlebury might be the next closest. Those may be the only other schools that need to be directly concerned about the tax at present, although I’m not sure about medical or other specialized institutions.
According to College Navigator, Principia (the Christian Science LAC) had a Fall 2016 enrollment of 476. They are another example of a school that is currently exempt due to small (< 500) enrollment, but which would likely be subject to the tax if enrollment rose slightly.
So this is a change from the original proposal? Because wasn’t it going to tax all endowments over $500,000,000? And for endowment per student they count grad students as well? Seems like it hurts the smaller schools more