Lawmakers Consider Taxing Huge College Endowments

The state legislature is considering a bill that would impose a tax on huge endowments at private state colleges and universities.

The bill as written would tax endowments over one-billion-dollars at the rate of two and a half percent each year.

Harvard has an endowment of around 50-billion-dollars, and the proposed tax would cost the Cambridge school 14-billion-dollars over the next decade.

Bill supporters say the revenue would be used to improve public education in Massachusetts.

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