[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.