THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 1, 1994 TAG: 9410010295
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Hampton University, threatened with fines by the Internal Revenue Service for filing incomplete tax data, has submitted a new tax form listing the salaries of each of its top executives.
The form indicates President William R. Harvey gets $129,588 a year. That makes him the fourth-highest-paid college president in the region. When The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star surveyed college administrators' salaries in July, Hampton was the only local college that did not report its president's salary.
The instructions for the IRS 990 tax forms, which must be filed by all tax-exempt organizations, say the groups must report ``all forms of cash and noncash compensation received by each listed officer.''
But in its tax forms, Hampton listed only a grand total for its officers - Harvey, Vice Presidents Elnora Daniel and Leon L. Scott, and secretary Sheila Maye. Scott, the vice president for business affairs, had termed Hampton's form an ``alternative presentation,'' which had been approved by the university's auditors.
After the salary survey, Charles Anderson, a group manager for the IRS, wrote to Scott in August. He was instructed to submit amended forms listing the salaries of each university executive and to ``allow the public inspection of this material. Failure to do so could result in penalties imposed on the university and on any individuals causing the university to fail to comply. . Internal Revenue Service is serious about enforcing it.'' A few weeks later, Scott sent the revised forms.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, a national weekly newspaper covering higher education, last month listed Hampton among the universities not complying with the tax laws. In the article, Marcus S. Owens, who heads the IRS' Exempt Organizations Technical Division, called Scott's explanation ``arrogant,'' saying: ``Aggregate reporting is clearly not the way the question is designed to be answered.''
``It appears that we were in error, that our interpretation was incorrect,'' Scott said Friday.
Scott said the university was not fined by the IRS. IRS spokesman Sam Serio said he could not comment on the Hampton case. But in most instances, when a tax-exempt institution corrects its mistakes after being contacted by the agency, it is not fined, Serio said.
In terms of salary, Harvey, Hampton's president, ranks behind Edward E. Brickell of the Medical College of Hampton Roads, Timothy J. Sullivan of the College of William and Mary and James V. Koch of Old Dominion University.
Harvey is credited with building the university's $90 million endowment, one of the richest for any historically black college in the nation, and forging strong ties with Washington politicians.
KEYWORDS: HAMPTON UNIVERSITY SALARIES
by CNB