Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development Volume 25 Issue 4 Volume 25, Summer 2011, Issue 4 Article 12 The Tenure Tax: Social Security Withholdings on Academic Retirement after University of Pittsburgh v. United States Christopher Meskill Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/jcred This Notes and Comments is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE TENURE TAX: SOCIAL SECURITY WITHHOLDINGS ON ACADEMIC RETIREMENT AFTER UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH V. UNITED STA TES CHRISTOPHER MESKILL* INTRODUCTION The purchase of tenure rights, an increasingly common practice by American colleges and universities, is a mutually beneficial way of extinguishing a professor's perpetual right to employment at a school.' In the transaction, the professor receives either a lump-sum payment or an augmentation of her previously allocable retirement package. 2 Meanwhile, the university benefits from freed financial resources and additional flexibility within its academic departments. 3 These transactions, however, * J.D., 2010, St. John's University School of Law; B.B.A., 2007, Accountancy, University of Notre Dame. I John 0. Everett et al., Tenure Buyouts: The Case for Capital Gains Treatment, 3 J. LEGAL TAX REs. 78, 78 (2004) (noting the frequency with which tenure buyouts occur at major universities and their growing popularity in recent years); Jon J. Jensen, Reducing the Employment Tax Burden on Tenure Buyouts, 80 N.