Hello -
Programming at our college (St. John's College - Annapolis & Santa Fe) includes Community outreach that has a series of programs - Summer Classics, Winter Classics & Day of Classics. For years this program has offered educational discounts to educators.. The programs themselves offer classes on specific themes, subjects or authors to allow non-students the opportunity to learn more about great books and the program we offer to both undergraduates and graduate students at the College. There are no degrees offered to participants. However, discounts are given to educators as a means to introduce them to the program at the college and with a hope that they will be advocates to their students. Additionally, our major gift team has used support of these discounts to educators to ask donors to fund an endowed scholarship that will fund these discounts (ie scholarships( in perpetuity.
Prior to my time these discounts - and now scholarships - were not treated as a taxable benefit to the educators. Since I've been overseeing the posting of the registrations to these programs - I began asking questions about benefits and how to report them - I've been told by the program manager that since the attendees receiving the benefit are educators - the discount and future scholarship from the endowment are not taxable. I've also been told at various times that the discounts are marketing expenses.
External opinions are almost always treated more authoritatively - so I thought I'd seek your feedback,
Thanks
Richard West
St. John's College
rawest@sjc.edu
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Richard West
St. John's College
rawest@sjc.edu------------------------------