Tax-Motivated Expense Allocations by Nonprofit Organizations
利用保密纳税申报数据，发现医疗和教育类非营利组织将免税活动的费用分配给应税活动以减少税负，但无法确定是否违法；慈善类非营利组织则无此行为。
Although nonprofit organizations are generally exempt from income taxation, they pay taxes on profits from activities unrelated to their primary exempt purpose. Congress intended this tax on unrelated business activities to prevent unfair competition with for-profit businesses and to raise revenue. In the aggregate, nonprofits report annual losses on their taxable activities of more than $1 billion on $4 billion of revenues. In contrast, they report aggregate profits of over $50 billion on their tax-exempt activities. Analysis of a database of confidential tax returns suggests that medical and educational nonprofits allocate expenses from their tax-exempt to their taxable activities to reduce their tax liabilities, although unfortunately it is not possible to determine the extent to which these allocations represent noncompliance with tax laws. In contrast, I find no evidence that charitable nonprofits engage in tax-motivated allocation behavior.