IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6820.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nonprofit Business Activity and the Unrelated Business Income Tax

Author

Listed:
  • James R. Hines, Jr.

Abstract

American nonprofit organizations are generally exempt from federal income tax, with the exception that profits earned from activities that are subject to the Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT). The UBIT is intended to prevent nonprofits and taxable for-profit firms, and also to prevent erosion of the federal tax base through tax-motivated transactions between taxable and tax-exempt entities. The evidence indicates that American nonprofit organizations engage in very little unrelated business activity, paying aggregate UBIT of less than $200 million annually. Large nonprofit organizations, and those with pressing financial needs due to high program-related expenses and low receipts of contributions and government grants, are the most likely to have unrelated business income. The same organizational characteristics are not associated with earning income from inventory sales that are nonprofits incur important organizational costs in undertaking unrelated business activity, since unrelated business income is concentrated among organizations facing the strongest financial pressures. This, in turn, carries implications for the efficiency of the UBIT as a source of tax revenue and for the need to tax the business income of nonprofit organizations in order to prevent

Suggested Citation

  • James R. Hines, Jr., 2000. "Nonprofit Business Activity and the Unrelated Business Income Tax," NBER Working Papers 6820, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6820
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6820.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sansing, Richard, 1998. "The Unrelated Business Income Tax, Cost Allocation, and Productive Efficiency," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 2), pages 291-302, June.
    2. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    3. Sansing, Richard, 1998. "The Unrelated Business Income Tax, Cost Allocation, and Productive Efficiency," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(2), pages 291-302, June.
    4. Joseph J. Cordes & Burton A. Weisbrod, "undated". "Differential Taxation of Nonprofits and the Commercialization of Nonprofit Revenues," IPR working papers 97-15, Institute for Policy Resarch at Northwestern University.
    5. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1973. "Taxation, corporate financial policy, and the cost of capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-34, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mihir A. Desai & Robert J. Yetman, 2005. "Constraining Managers without Owners: Governance of the Not-for-Profit Enterprise," NBER Working Papers 11140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Duquette, Nicolas J., 2016. "Do tax incentives affect charitable contributions? Evidence from public charities' reported revenues," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 51-69.
    3. Jonathan Oxley, 2021. "Does Additional Mandatory Reporting Alter Charity or Donor Behavior?---Examining the 2006 Pension Protection Act," Working Papers wp2021_01_02, Department of Economics, Florida State University.
    4. Maxim Sinitsyn & Burton A. Weisbrod, 2008. "Behavior of Nonprofit Organizations in For-Profit Markets: The Curious Case of Unprofitable Revenue-Raising Activities," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 164(4), pages 727-750, December.
    5. Oxley, Jonathan, 2022. "Does additional mandatory reporting alter charity or donor behavior? Examining the 2006 Pension Protection Act," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 738-751.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James Alm & Daniel Teles, 2018. "State and federal tax policy toward nonprofit organizations," Chapters, in: Bruce A. Seaman & Dennis R. Young (ed.), Handbook of Research on Nonprofit Economics and Management, chapter 19, pages 370-385, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Hofmann, Mary Ann & McSwain, Dwayne, 2013. "Financial disclosure management in the nonprofit sector: A framework for past and future research," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 61-87.
    3. Ranjani Krishnan & Michelle H. Yetman, 2011. "Institutional Drivers of Reporting Decisions in Nonprofit Hospitals," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 1001-1039, September.
    4. Laisney, François & Pohlmeier, Winfried & Staat, Matthias, 1991. "Estimation of labour supply functions using panel data: a survey," ZEW Discussion Papers 91-05, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. Das, Marcel & van Soest, Arthur, 1999. "A panel data model for subjective information on household income growth," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 409-426, December.
    6. Chamberlain, Gary, 1982. "Multivariate regression models for panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 5-46, January.
    7. Chen, Yi-Yi & Schmidt, Peter & Wang, Hung-Jen, 2014. "Consistent estimation of the fixed effects stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 181(2), pages 65-76.
    8. Schaffner, Sandra & Spengler, Hannes, 2005. "Der Einfluss unbeobachteter Heterogenität auf kompensatorische Lohndifferentiale und den Wert eines Statistischen Lebens: Eine mikroökonometrische Parallelanalyse mit IABS und SOEP," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 36800, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    9. Marco Alfò & Lorenzo Carbonari & Giovanni Trovato, 2020. "On the Effects of Taxation on Growth: an Empirical Assessment," CEIS Research Paper 480, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 08 May 2020.
    10. Joseph G. Altonji & Rosa L. Matzkin, 2001. "Panel Data Estimators for Nonseparable Models with Endogenous Regressors," NBER Technical Working Papers 0267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jan Brenner, 2007. "Parental Impact on Attitude Formation - A Siblings Study on Worries about Immigration," Ruhr Economic Papers 0022, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    12. Trottmann, Maria & Zweifel, Peter & Beck, Konstantin, 2012. "Supply-side and demand-side cost sharing in deregulated social health insurance: Which is more effective?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 231-242.
    13. Susan Averett & Sanders Korenman, 1996. "The Economic Reality of the Beauty Myth," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(2), pages 304-330.
    14. Sheahan, Megan & Black, Roy & Jayne, T.S., 2013. "Are Kenyan farmers under-utilizing fertilizer? Implications for input intensification strategies and research," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 39-52.
    15. Alvarez, Javier & Arellano, Manuel, 2022. "Robust likelihood estimation of dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 21-61.
    16. Seth Gershenson, 2016. "Performance Standards and Employee Effort: Evidence From Teacher Absences," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(3), pages 615-638, June.
    17. Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2022. "Health shocks and housing downsizing: How persistent is ‘ageing in place’?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 490-508.
    18. Geert Dhaene & Koen Jochmans, 2015. "Split-panel Jackknife Estimation of Fixed-effect Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(3), pages 991-1030.
    19. Lars Kunze & Nicolai Suppa, 2014. "Bowling Alone or Bowling at All? The Effect of Unemployment on Social Participation," Ruhr Economic Papers 0510, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    20. Ekaterina Kalugina & Boris Najman, 2003. "Travail et pauvreté en Russie : évaluations objectives et perceptions subjectives," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 367(1), pages 83-100.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6820. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.