[Declanomous]

Can someone explain to me why Universities, which are mostly non-taxable entities, would use offshore banking?

[fovc]

"The only time university endowments pay taxes is when they invest in debt-financed financial firms such as private equity funds and hedge funds. These investments are considered a business activity unrelated to their tax-exempt missions."

[Declanomous]

Somehow that part of the article didn't click for me. The NYT article linked in the following sentence does a great job of explaining why they are being taxed if you don't have a finance background.

[ringaroundthetx]

Yeah I think ICIJ's outrage-bait here is a swing and a miss.

UBIT 40% tax on charities was not created to hit university endowments. This is a reason to use an offshore entity.

[gaius]

UBIT 40% tax on charities was not created to hit university endowments

So you're saying we can all simply pick and choose which laws were created with us in mind?

[ringaroundthetx]

obviously you can, not sure what the argument here is.

[bradleyjg]

In addition to the sibling comment there’s also been some disclosures regarding investments in industries that could plausibly get universities bad press — such as coal mines.

[wavefunction]

Given the current cost of coal relative to renewable sources that seems like the exact sort of poor investment that the public or interested parties should know about so it can be rectified.