4 ms·

From the article it seems like they wanted to make sure the money was going to good use and it wasn’t.

by praveenperera 9y ago

ghostly_s 9y ago
You're not addressing the question, though. This was not a contract for services rendered. It was a gift.
- Twirrim 9y ago
  You can assign any terms and conditions you want on a gift. That happens outside of business and academic environments anyway, but notionally it's not any different from any other transaction. UChicago didn't have to accept it. They chose to accept it, with the associated terms and conditions. The way the article reads, it looks like there's blame to go around, but possibly more to UChicago than Pearsons.
  - twinkletwinkle 9y ago
    At what point is it no longer a gift though? What if I write a contract with Boeing where I "gift" them $X million dollars and they "gift" me a brand new jumbo jet? Do you think the IRS would be interested in the specifics of that contract?
    - chrisseaton 9y ago
      The law is not a deterministic computer program that explicitly covers all cases in the code. The law applies common sense tests of reasonableness and your scenario would obviously not pass the test.
    - freddie_mercury 9y ago
      The law around gifts is pretty clear and well defined. Just go read the relevant laws and tax rulings instead of pedantically arguing on an internet forum.
    - schoen 9y ago
      The IRS can evaluate restricted charitable contributions to ensure that they meet a charitable purpose. If you make a restricted gift to a 501(c)(3) organization, the receiving organization should evaluate the conditions to ensure that they don't undermine the tax-exempt purposes of the organization's work. I expect that the IRS could examine the deduction on both ends to ensure that you didn't receive significant value in exchange for your gift, and that the organization is still engaged in appropriate activities. Normally when you make a tax-deductible charitable gift, the organization you donated to will send you a letter documenting your gift and stating that no goods or services were provided in exchange for the gift: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/charitable-contributions-written-acknowledgments https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz... https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf The IRS might review that documentation as part of a tax audit. If it's inaccurate, it could conceivably affect the tax status of the organization that issued the acknowledgement letter. The IRS can also revoke the 501(c)(3) designation of an organization if it concludes that the organization is inappropriately providing benefits to its donors. For example, it might require the organization to be reclassified under a different tax-exempt status where donations are not automatically treated as tax-deductible charitable contributions. A subtle thing that might be bothering you is that people can make extremely specific charitable gifts to pursue extremely specific goals, and those can still be treated as tax-deductible. For example, you could donate to create a scholarship with very detailed eligibility requirements (often, donors to schools have created scholarships for students with very similar life circumstances to the donors' own). But, there is still a requirement that can't claim a deduction for the amount of a donation for which you personally receive goods or services with a market value as a quid pro quo, except to the extent the donation exceeds that market value. I'm not a lawyer or accountant and this is not tax or legal advice.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      A gift to Boeing would be a taxable event. The IRS would consider it a transaction. When I joined the Bronx Zoo as a member, I gave them $200 and received some benefits in consideration. Those benefits are valued at $140, so I am able to deduct $60 from my income.
- marnett 9y ago
  Typically gifts, most often endowment gifts, are given to benefit a specific purpose (ie spreading fine arts). I could understand how there could potentially be obligations put forth to meet the original purpose of the endowment. This is a first though, I didn't know you could take it back.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  According to the article it was a contract. The University of Chicago entered a contract with the Pearson family to host an institute. That the university reported it as a gift in the press was perhaps unfortunate, but it is understandable as it has better optics. If the idea for the Institute had been the universities, and they were soliciting donors to fund it, and Pearson was one of multiple donors, sure that would qualify as a gift, but as the article is written, this was a very different beast.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    It can still be a gift, even if strings are attached.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
majos 9y ago
It's hard to tell. One of the Pearsons' (the donors) complaints is that two of the faculty hired by the institute are junior faculty from lower-ranked institutions -- these institutions being Columbia and NYU. Perhaps the Pearsons wanted the institute to just poach tenured faculty from Harvard or whatever, but this hardly seems negligent on the director's part. Perhaps they know of additional evidence that explains this more. The second complaint is that the contract stipulated a conference of some sort needed to occur at the institute by October 2018, and the resulting Catholic conference was unsatisfactory to them (it sounds like they disliked the conference's emphasis on heterosexual marriage). It's hard to tell how reasonable these complaints are from the outside, and how much of it is donors who don't know much about universities trying to micro-manage a gift after the fact. For what it's worth the article claims the Pearsons have lost a similar donation case before.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  If what is presented in the article is true and complete, it seems pretty straight forward. Had they been more senior professors from lower ranked universities it probably would be close. But being junior AND lower ranked is kind of icing on the cake. As for the conference, they had a specific mandate and didn't fulfill it. They knew they weren't going to fulfill it so they sent a request to the Pearsons asking if a conference that was already happening would suffice. A conference about hetero marriage which seems to have nothing to do with world peace. So seems like a blatant cop out. My first thought was that they are just difficult, seeing as they have sued before, but it may just be that they are just vigilant as to how their money is used.
  - ghein 9y ago
    According to Times Higher Education, Chicago is ranked 11th in the US and 8th in the World (different rankings...) while Columbia is ranked 2nd in the US and 14th in the World. Rankings across every discipline will be different and vary based on the source but that's a decent estimate. The article notes one source has Chicago at #3 and Columbia at #5, with NYU at #30. No Federal Judge is going to accept the Pearson's argument that Columbia is an obviously far inferior school. This argument would mean that the only acceptable sources of faculty would be Princeton, Harvard, Chicago and Yale (tied for 3rd with Chicago). Maybe they would accept Oxford and Cambridge as additional acceptable sources? The overall complaint gives the sense that the Pearson's are exacting and highly litigious. Exacting on a $100MM donation is understandable, filing suit this fast is rather absurd. But both sides have lots of money for both academic research and lawyers so it will be entertaining at least.

From the article it seems like they wanted to make sure the money was going to good use and it wasn’t.

ghostly_s 9y ago

You're not addressing the question, though. This was not a contract for services rendered. It was a gift.

Twirrim 9y ago
You can assign any terms and conditions you want on a gift. That happens outside of business and academic environments anyway, but notionally it's not any different from any other transaction. UChicago didn't have to accept it. They chose to accept it, with the associated terms and conditions. The way the article reads, it looks like there's blame to go around, but possibly more to UChicago than Pearsons.
- twinkletwinkle 9y ago
  At what point is it no longer a gift though? What if I write a contract with Boeing where I "gift" them $X million dollars and they "gift" me a brand new jumbo jet? Do you think the IRS would be interested in the specifics of that contract?
  - chrisseaton 9y ago
    The law is not a deterministic computer program that explicitly covers all cases in the code. The law applies common sense tests of reasonableness and your scenario would obviously not pass the test.
  - freddie_mercury 9y ago
    The law around gifts is pretty clear and well defined. Just go read the relevant laws and tax rulings instead of pedantically arguing on an internet forum.
  - schoen 9y ago
    The IRS can evaluate restricted charitable contributions to ensure that they meet a charitable purpose. If you make a restricted gift to a 501(c)(3) organization, the receiving organization should evaluate the conditions to ensure that they don't undermine the tax-exempt purposes of the organization's work. I expect that the IRS could examine the deduction on both ends to ensure that you didn't receive significant value in exchange for your gift, and that the organization is still engaged in appropriate activities. Normally when you make a tax-deductible charitable gift, the organization you donated to will send you a letter documenting your gift and stating that no goods or services were provided in exchange for the gift: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/charitable-contributions-written-acknowledgments https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz... https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf The IRS might review that documentation as part of a tax audit. If it's inaccurate, it could conceivably affect the tax status of the organization that issued the acknowledgement letter. The IRS can also revoke the 501(c)(3) designation of an organization if it concludes that the organization is inappropriately providing benefits to its donors. For example, it might require the organization to be reclassified under a different tax-exempt status where donations are not automatically treated as tax-deductible charitable contributions. A subtle thing that might be bothering you is that people can make extremely specific charitable gifts to pursue extremely specific goals, and those can still be treated as tax-deductible. For example, you could donate to create a scholarship with very detailed eligibility requirements (often, donors to schools have created scholarships for students with very similar life circumstances to the donors' own). But, there is still a requirement that can't claim a deduction for the amount of a donation for which you personally receive goods or services with a market value as a quid pro quo, except to the extent the donation exceeds that market value. I'm not a lawyer or accountant and this is not tax or legal advice.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    A gift to Boeing would be a taxable event. The IRS would consider it a transaction. When I joined the Bronx Zoo as a member, I gave them $200 and received some benefits in consideration. Those benefits are valued at $140, so I am able to deduct $60 from my income.
marnett 9y ago
Typically gifts, most often endowment gifts, are given to benefit a specific purpose (ie spreading fine arts). I could understand how there could potentially be obligations put forth to meet the original purpose of the endowment. This is a first though, I didn't know you could take it back.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
According to the article it was a contract. The University of Chicago entered a contract with the Pearson family to host an institute. That the university reported it as a gift in the press was perhaps unfortunate, but it is understandable as it has better optics. If the idea for the Institute had been the universities, and they were soliciting donors to fund it, and Pearson was one of multiple donors, sure that would qualify as a gift, but as the article is written, this was a very different beast.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  It can still be a gift, even if strings are attached.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

majos 9y ago

It's hard to tell. One of the Pearsons' (the donors) complaints is that two of the faculty hired by the institute are junior faculty from lower-ranked institutions -- these institutions being Columbia and NYU. Perhaps the Pearsons wanted the institute to just poach tenured faculty from Harvard or whatever, but this hardly seems negligent on the director's part. Perhaps they know of additional evidence that explains this more. The second complaint is that the contract stipulated a conference of some sort needed to occur at the institute by October 2018, and the resulting Catholic conference was unsatisfactory to them (it sounds like they disliked the conference's emphasis on heterosexual marriage). It's hard to tell how reasonable these complaints are from the outside, and how much of it is donors who don't know much about universities trying to micro-manage a gift after the fact. For what it's worth the article claims the Pearsons have lost a similar donation case before.

jjeaff 9y ago
If what is presented in the article is true and complete, it seems pretty straight forward. Had they been more senior professors from lower ranked universities it probably would be close. But being junior AND lower ranked is kind of icing on the cake. As for the conference, they had a specific mandate and didn't fulfill it. They knew they weren't going to fulfill it so they sent a request to the Pearsons asking if a conference that was already happening would suffice. A conference about hetero marriage which seems to have nothing to do with world peace. So seems like a blatant cop out. My first thought was that they are just difficult, seeing as they have sued before, but it may just be that they are just vigilant as to how their money is used.
- ghein 9y ago
  According to Times Higher Education, Chicago is ranked 11th in the US and 8th in the World (different rankings...) while Columbia is ranked 2nd in the US and 14th in the World. Rankings across every discipline will be different and vary based on the source but that's a decent estimate. The article notes one source has Chicago at #3 and Columbia at #5, with NYU at #30. No Federal Judge is going to accept the Pearson's argument that Columbia is an obviously far inferior school. This argument would mean that the only acceptable sources of faculty would be Princeton, Harvard, Chicago and Yale (tied for 3rd with Chicago). Maybe they would accept Oxford and Cambridge as additional acceptable sources? The overall complaint gives the sense that the Pearson's are exacting and highly litigious. Exacting on a $100MM donation is understandable, filing suit this fast is rather absurd. But both sides have lots of money for both academic research and lawyers so it will be entertaining at least.