Jonathon Trugman

Jonathon Trugman

Business

Top universities should be taxed under ‘tax the rich’ logic

Despite all the political rhetoric, let’s be honest: Tax increases have never produced a single job — not a one.

Taxing the rich or middle class more and more has in reality cost many their jobs and even more a pay raise, all while reducing the amount of your take-home income.

Because it’s primary season, the candidates on the left are talking tough on taxing rich people, as if they are an evil class, which they are not.

But they have yet to talk about the richest of the rich — the one group so wealthy that changing tax policy or outright taxing them could literally solve millions of families’ financial problems.

College and university endowments — largely shielded from taxes by “not-for-profit” status as “educational institutions” — amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s the biggest tax scam the world has ever known.

At the end of last year, US families owed $1.5 trillion in student debt, while the well-endowed hoarded $617 billion, according to the 2018 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments.

The 10 largest of the 802 college endowments in the study held $217.7 billion at the end of 2018 — or 35% of university endowment assets.

Each year, the national student debt goes up, and each year, the Ivory Tower economists watch their university endowment billions grow tax-free.

Look at it as the world’s most powerful socialist cartel: A few control the fate of the millions of dollars the minions pay into their treasure chests.

It is time to tax the richest by requiring them to open their trust fund vaults and use their principal to reduce student debt and make tuition far cheaper for all.