Non-Profit Morons - Falling Into Their Own Pit!

City Sends Tax Bills To Major Non-Profits

For the first time, Boston’s major tax-exempt institutions — its premier hospitals, universities, and cultural centers — are being asked to make regular voluntary payments to the city based on the value of their property to help offset the rising cost of city services and cuts in state financial aid.

Although many of the city’s nonprofit organizations have been making so-called Payments In Lieu of Taxes for decades, this marks a major change to a system that feels to some organizations uncomfortably close to tax bills. Boston officials recently mailed letters to leaders at 40 major nonprofits asking them to pay up to 25 percent of what they would owe if their property were not tax-exempt.

"We’re looking for fairness for Boston taxpayers and the nonprofits," said Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino. "This isn’t something we drew up on the back of an envelope. It’s something we put a lot of thought into."

The new revenue-raising plan — the first of its kind in the nation — is based on the estimated cost of providing basic city services, such as police and fire protection, snow removal, and emergency medical treatment, which account for roughly 25 percent of the city’s budget. And it is designed to gradually increase annual financial payments to the city by the major tax-exempt organizations from the $15 million they paid this year to $48 million over a five-year ramp-up period.

Hah!

Got to love those totalitarian statists in Boston.

After taxing all the business out of state....they figure (on the back of an envelope!) that they had better somehow come up with the dough to pay for continued pensions, pork, and waste.

AND the good thing about taxing Harvard as opposed to say Fidelity or tourists (14.45% hotel tax PLUS 20% car rental tax)....is that Harvard can't exactly bolt out of town! Although the Moron Greg Mankiw has suggested it in the past in response to *endowment taxation*.

There's no doubt in my mind that these so-called 'non-profits' will cave in and pay the voluntary taxes.

Of course the extortion will escalate and of course jobs/salaries will be cut and hospital bills will be padded...

But none of that will matter to the elitist brethren who run these institutions. They'll just want to make nice with their cocktail party cronies.