UPDATED: Jan. 23, 2018 at 12:01 p.m.

Jim Boeheim’s salary could force Syracuse University to pay thousands of dollars in additional taxes every year under a provision of the Republican Party’s controversial tax overhaul plan.

“I don’t have much of a feeling on that,” Boeheim said on Monday during the Atlantic Coast Conference coaches teleconference. “I don’t understand exactly what this is all about, really. It’s beyond me.”

A nonprofit’s five highest paid employees will generally subject their employer to a new 21 percent excise tax of some of their pay if they make more than $1 million a year in taxable compensation as part of the provision.

Boeheim, the university’s head basketball coach, was paid $1,957,449 in reportable income by SU in Fiscal Year 2014. He also earned $2,151,736 in FY 2015. It’s unlikely Boeheim’s annual salary has dipped below $1 million since then.

Almost every coach in the ACC league in recent years has been paid more than $1 million as a salary, 990 forms and school announcements show.

An SU spokeswoman in a statement said the university’s aware of the tax provision but, “we are not able to discuss specifics of personnel matters.”

The excise tax wouldn’t take a chunk out of Boeheim’s salary, though. Consider his reported compensation for FY 2014 as an example.

According to the university’s 990 form, SU paid the basketball coach $1,957,449. Of that salary, the excise tax could apply to the amount Boeheim made over $1 million. The GOP’s new excise, if theoretically applied to FY 2014, could hit SU with 21 percent of $957,449, which would be an additional $201,064 in taxes.

In FY 2014, Boeheim was also paid $86,221 in an estimated amount of, “other compensation from the organization and related organizations,” according to the 990 form.

It remains unclear if that $86,221 would factor into the total amount SU could be taxed 21 percent for, of Boeheim’s salary, if considering FY 2014 as an example. The 990 does not detail if any of that $86,221 was taxable income.

So, in theory, the university could be forced to pay more than $201,064 in additional taxes.

Nonprofits, including major universities, have to foot the bill under this provision. Not individual employees. Take Duke University as another example.

Mike Krzyzewski, one of the highest paid collegiate coaches in history, was paid $4,015,468 in reportable compensation by Duke in FY 2014, according to the university’s 990 form.

Krzyzewski could force Duke to pay about $843,248 yearly in additional taxes, under the provision, if theoretically using reportable compensation in FY 2014, as an example. But, like Boeheim, it’s unclear if more than $1.5 million in Krzyzewski’s estimated “compensation from the organization and related organizations” in FY 2014 could also affect that figure.

Brian Pinheiro, chair of Philadelphia-based Ballard Spahr, LLP’s business and finance department, said the new excise tax applies to nonprofits in a way similar to that of other taxes applied to publicly traded companies, such as IBM.

“The problem with that proposition is that the rest of the tax bill also gives a pretty significant tax cut to publicly traded companies,” Pinheiro said.

Pinheiro represents for-profit, tax-exempt church and government employers on matters relating to executive compensation.

As part of the Republican Party’s $1.5 trillion tax plan, the country’s federal corporate tax rate was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent at the start of the year.

“It may just purely have been, ‘we need to raise money somewhere, and here’s a good place to do it,’” Pinheiro said of the nonprofit compensation tax.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the theoretical effect of the GOP’s new excise on Fiscal Year 2014 was misstated. The excise could have hit SU with 21 percent of $957,449 of Jim Boeheim’s salary, or an additional $201,064 in taxes. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on January 22, 2018 at 12:58 pm

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