Free Ride: The Tax-Exempt Economy

The National Football League, that bastion of free enterprise and million-dollar quarterbacks, is not what you normally think of when someone says non-profit organization. Or the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, which puts on the dazzling $6 million Oscars show each spring. But thanks to the largesse of Washington lawmakers, these and 1.2 million other groups qualify as tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations. And you make up for the taxes they don't pay. A major but little-noticed change has taken place in the American economy in the last twenty years: the dramatic growth of nonprofit businesses. These businesses had an estimated $500 billion in revenues in 1990 - nearly six times the income of farms, five times that of utilities, and twice as much as the construction industry - virtually all of it off the tax rolls. This startling analysis exposes some major abuses by tax-exempt organizations - nonprofit hospitals, private colleges and universities, and foundations. Based on the series in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert M. Gaul and business reporter Neill A. Borowski, a skilled database journalist, this book is a must read for every taxpayer.