President Trump on Friday said he is stripping Harvard University of its tax exempt status.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a Truth Social post.
The move comes just weeks after the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multiyear federal grants over the elite Ivy League school’s refusal to help stamp out alleged antisemitism and hate on campus.
At the time, Trump had floated the possibility of targeting the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university’s tax-exempt status if it continued to push “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” on its students.
“Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” he said.
Tax-exempt status, which is decided by the Internal Revenue Service, enables universities to receive hefty financial gifts from the country’s richest donors who want to decrease their tax burdens and means the institutions don’t pay income taxes on any net earnings.
Still, federal tax law prohibits the president or other senior officials from requesting that an IRS employee conduct or terminate an audit or investigation.
It wasn’t immediately clear what argument the White House would make to strip Harvard of its status.
Harvard’s tax exemptions have been instrumental in helping the elite school amass the nation’s largest university endowment at roughly $53 billion — from which it earned about $2.4 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.
The Ivy League’s hefty endowment proceeds reportedly fund about 37.5% of its $6.4 billion operating budget. The school’s $686 million in annual federal funding makes up 16% of the operating budget.
Under an altered tax-exempt status, the endowment income’s tax rate could soar from 1.4% to the standard 21% corporate tax rate – potentially translating to a $525 million annual reduction in funds.
Howard Abrams, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and corporate tax specialist, previously told The Post that the actual theoretical reduction was unclear, partly because tuition could be considered taxable income.
“Salaries and other costs of running the university would be deductible,” Abrams said. “It’s not clear to me how financial aid would be treated.”
