President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration would revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status, escalating his fight with the nation’s oldest institution of higher education.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “It’s what they deserve!”
Harvard, along with many other universities across the country, are exempt from paying taxes because they are included in section 501(c)(3) of U.S. tax code which designates them as nonprofits.
The IRS could yank Harvard’s tax-exempt status, though not without cause. It would be required to show the school is violating longstanding rules governing when entities can receive a tax exemption. That would likely be a lengthy process, and Harvard would be free to challenge the decision in court — a case some experts have said the school would likely win.
“There is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” a Harvard spokesperson said in a statement. “Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission. It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation.”
An IRS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s latest social media post comes as a battle between the prestigious university and his administration continues to spiral.
The Trump administration launched a review of roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts with the university over treatment of Jewish students that it says violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, including during protests of the Israel-Hamas war that roiled campuses across the country last year.
The administration has already rescinded more than $2 billion in federal funding from the school and is weighing whether to pull another $1 billion in grants. Harvard is suing the administration to challenge the decision to cut off money from the institution. The university said the far-reaching demands of Trump’s antisemitism task force — which included changes to the university’s hiring, admissions, discipline and programming — for reinstating the cash were unreasonable.
Trump threatened the university’s tax-exempt status, a few weeks ago, and the Department of Homeland Security has suggested it may revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, who make up about 27 percent of its total enrollment and a key source of revenue. The Education Department is also probing the university’s foreign funding.
Last month, the president took to social media to ask whether Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity.”
The IRS reportedly then started looking into that shortly thereafter, however it is illegal for government officials to push the IRS to audit or investigate individual taxpayers.
The White House has said that the president wouldn’t play any role in any investigation from the tax agency into Harvard. But Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are urging the IRS’ watchdog to investigate whether the administration is illegally pressuring the agency to strip Harvard of its tax exemption.
Brian Faler and Bernie Becker contributed to this report.
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