Nonprofit Resources

Cell Phone Tower Rental and UBIT: Data from Our Annual Survey

For our annual Higher Education Tax Reporting Trends Project, we survey colleges, universities, and seminaries across the U.S. on key higher education tax issues.

This year’s edition includes data from four weekly email mini-surveys, which averaged 153 responses per week.

One of the questions in this year’s survey was “Does your institution receive rental income from space on any communications towers or equipment?” One-third (33.99%) of our respondents answered yes.

We included this question because cell phone tower rental income continues to be a tricky, confusing topic when it comes to unrelated business income tax (UBIT). In fact, there were at least three separate discussions about this at the 2017 NACUBO Unrelated Business Income Tax Conference in Seattle last February.

Download your free copy of the 2017 Higher Education Tax Reporting Trends Project for more on this subject, along with other key statistics.

Our team of experts can help you with Unrelated Business Income Tax Studies or a wide range of higher education services. Please contact us to discuss your specific needs.

Sign up for e-news and alerts