- The White House instructed the IRS to revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status.
- Gov. Cox said this could ultimately harm Utah-based religious organizations.
- Cox worried about the "destruction of norms" under the Biden and Trump administrations.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he is concerned that President Donald Trump’s effort to rescind Harvard University’s tax-exempt status could open the door for future administrations to penalize religious institutions in the Beehive State.
Important discussions need to be had about Harvard’s operations, Cox said Thursday during a monthly PBS broadcast. But a “destruction of norms” regarding tax-exempt universities could come back to hurt Utah-based institutions, according to Cox.
“Despite my significant disagreements with Harvard, I would be very wary,” Cox said. “It worries me, it scares me and I think we should tread very carefully.”
On Wednesday, the Trump administration reportedly asked the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard’s income tax exemption, according to multiple media reports. Tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits include organizations that focus exclusively on charity, religion, research and education.
The request came after Harvard President Alan Garber published a statement on Monday rejecting directives from the Trump administration in order to retain public funding. Garber said the requirements “represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”
The Trump administration has made demands of several universities, including Harvard, to make changes to programs determined to have “egregious records of antisemitism,” to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion practices and to implement merit-based reforms to hiring and admissions.
On Tuesday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” The Trump administration then announced a freeze on over $2 billion in federal grants to Harvard.
Cox says religious organizations threatened
Considering Harvard’s more than $53 billion in endowments, Cox said it is a legitimate debate as to whether wealthy private universities should pay more in taxes and receive less in public subsidies.
“I’m absolutely open to that conversation,” Cox said. “But when we do it for ideological purposes, I try to imagine what happens if my team loses another election.”
This thought experiment is “a good check on us at all times,” Cox said, encouraging Utahns to ask themselves how they would react if the “other side did the thing that your team is doing now.”
The IRS has occasionally conducted audits of private schools to determine whether they still complied with the criteria for tax-exempt status.
The highest profile example was in the 1970s when the IRS removed the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in South Carolina because of its ban on interracial dating and marriage.
But tax-exempt rescissions could become more common if the Trump administration instructs the IRS to target institutions because of political factors, Cox said, potentially paving the way for a future Democratic president to threaten religious organizations that don’t comply with their administration’s priorities.
“Imagine a world where Gavin Newsom gets elected president and decides that he wants to go after conservative causes, that he thinks religion should not be exempt,” Cox said, referring to the current California governor. “And then we have institutions in our state, like Brigham Young University or a church that is headquartered here, who is now facing the very real possibility of that type of backlash.”
Federal code prohibits the executive branch from requesting — directly or indirectly — that an employee of the IRS conduct an audit of any particular taxpayer. But if the IRS does move forward with the tax-exempt revocation, Cox pointed to a larger trend of norm-breaking in U.S. politics.
This is something he worried about during the previous administration, Cox said, when former President Joe Biden issued pardons for “family and friends,” including his son, Hunter Biden, his siblings and their spouses.
If this pattern continues, Cox said each party and presidential administration will feel justified in pushing the boundaries a little further.
“There’s no end to the ‘Well, your team did it, so we’re going to do it even more,’” Cox said. “It’s just a terrible way to run a country.”