Tax-Exempt Status Benefits All Citizens

I just read the letter from Blair Perot ’87 in the May PAW. I am confused. Perot correctly reminds us that tax-exempt status is provided to “entities that society believes are serving the public good.” In fact, according to the federal tax code, section 501(c)(3), nonprofit organizations that exist exclusively for educational purposes are tax-exempt, and thus throughout the history of the IRS, Princeton and other schools have not been taxed: religious schools, secular schools, military schools, vocational schools, boys’ schools, girls’ schools, nursery schools, universities — none of them. But my understanding falters when I read Perot’s next sentence: “Entrenched leftists don’t get to decide what the ‘public good’ is — society gets to decide that, and society (which yes, does unfortunately include those peons) is now about to make very clear how they currently value Princeton’s recent contributions to societal division and dysfunction.”

For 40 years after graduation I was perhaps the only member of my class whose career was in high school teaching, history and English. As a history teacher, I taught my students that one thing Americans had always — always — agreed to be taxed for was the support of schools, not so that their children could get good jobs but because educated citizens in a republic can better govern themselves. We have never taxed schools — not religious schools, secular schools, military schools, boys’ schools, girls’ schools, nursery schools, universities, none of them.

As an English teacher, I expected my students to write clearly, so that any reader could understand them, but I don’t understand what Perot means by “entrenched leftists.” Princeton? 163 years of IRS administrators? All the Congresses that have written the tax codes? And I don’t understand what is meant by “those peons”; perhaps I am one of them? perhaps Perot is? or is this a wittily ironic allusion to Elon Musk? But anyone can figure out who Perot means by “society”—certainly not the 64% who just told the AP/NORC poll that they appreciate the public benefit of colleges, and probably not the members of Congress who should be making our laws but no longer seem to be. No, Perot means the single person who now governs our nation by executive order. My high school history students could tell you what to call government by a single person, and it’s not “society.”