"due largely to the heavy new 8% tax on our endowment returns, a burden for MIT and only a few other peer schools"

I went digging. Turns out that's a 2025 "Big Beautiful Bill" thing, which raised that from 1.4% to 8% but only for colleges where the endowment exceeds $2,000,000 per student. Which meant MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard.

https://waysandmeans.house.gov/2025/05/14/ways-and-means-vot... boasts that this "Holds woke, elite universities that operate more like major corporations and other tax-exempt entities accountable".

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IncreasePosts 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Wow. If they think 8% is heavy they should see how much in taxes their janitors are paying

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simonw 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Presumably 0% on their 401k returns, which is the more appropriate comparison point to an endowment.

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spyckie2 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

Respectfully, comparing a janitor's 401k to a $27.4 billion endowment is (very) tone deaf.

But yes, the tax goes against "keeping sacred systems sacred" principles and is an opinionated policy against rich entities that the current administration dislikes.

	▲	simonw 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, it's tone deaf. And comparing tax on an endowment to "tax a janitor pays" is arguing in bad faith.