IRS Prepares to Ask Colleges About Compensation, Other Issues

An Internal Revenue Service official announced yesterday that the agency would soon be sending a questionnaire to roughly 400 colleges and universities to collect information on their executive compensation, endowments, and unrelated business income.

The survey had been scheduled as part of the agency’s fiscal year 2008 work plan, and is meant to identify how higher-education institutions are currently reporting financial data and if there are gaps in information that need to be filled in, said Steven J. Pyrek, an IRS spokesman.

The announcement comes less than a week after a spokesman for Sen. Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, told The Chronicle that he would like to see a new Form 990 tax schedule that would be specifically geared to colleges and universities and would require more reporting of colleges’ costs and student populations.