Arnold Ventures policy fellow, Tax Foundation president emeritus, and Substack writer brings tax and fiscal-policy expertise to coverage of and commentary about philanthropy and nonprofit sector.
Scott Hodge is joining The Giving Review as a senior fellow. Hodge is a tax and fiscal policy fellow at Arnold Ventures and president emeritus of and a senior advisor to the Tax Foundation, and he just launched a new Substack newsletter, The Exempt Class.
“Perhaps the most sacred of sacred cows in the tax code is the $3.6 trillion tax-exempt nonprofit sector,” Hodge writes at The Exempt Class. “I’ll be taking particular aim at the mega businesses that masquerade as charities, such as nonprofit hospitals, universities, sports leagues, health insurers, golf clubs, investment firms, business leagues, and utilities.”
Hodge has been a contributor to TGR, including with articles on tax principles, tax rates, tax breaks, and tax subsidies. “No for-profit organization or company should be forced to pay taxes in order to subsidize their competitor down the street. That’s really unfair,” he told us during a 2024 conversation.
“On the other hand, no one really is against truly benevolent organizations, whether it’s the food bank, the women’s shelter, the homeless shelter, and so forth,” he continues. “There are truly benevolent organizations out there, but they’re shrinking in number and size compared to these much-larger organizations that are really businesses masquerading as nonprofits.”
Hodge is the author of Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life.
Before becoming president of the Tax Foundation in 2000, Hodge was director of tax and budget policy at Citizens for a Sound Economy, and he spent 10 years at The Heritage Foundation as a fellow analyzing budget and tax policy.
TGR’s other senior fellow is Craig Kennedy—a Chronicle of Philanthropy columnist and former president of both The Joyce Foundation and the German Marshall Fund.
