Ehi Rajsky Co-Authors Paper Published in the AICPA Tax Advisor Journal The assistant professor of accounting was joined by two W&L Students to Produce a Paper Titled “Effects of the OBBBA on Higher Education”

By Abby Harlan
February 16, 2026

Ehi Rajsky, assistant professor of accounting at Washington and Lee University, recently published a paper in the AICPA Tax Advisor Journal along with two student co-authors, Trey Smith ‘26 and Jacob Taggart ‘28.

The paper, “Effects of the OBBBA on Higher Education,” examines how tax changes introduced by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA) could influence and impact donations provided to colleges and universities across the nation.

The authors suggested combatting the issue by proposing tax-planning approaches to aid donors in their navigation of the new law. These approaches include “bunching” multiple years of donations into a single year to exceed the new deduction floor, using donor-advised funds (DAFs) to grow contributions tax-free and help institutions avoid the endowment excise tax, channeling gifts through private operating foundations that can qualify for excise tax exemptions, making qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) directly from IRAs for donors age 70 ½ and older to bypass the AGI floor entirely and donating qualified scientific property from C corporations to university research programs for enhanced deductions. The authors also note that the OBBBA creates a new above-the-line deduction for nonitemizers making cash charitable contributions, which could broaden the donor base for colleges and universities.

Rajsky teamed with Smith and Taggert through W&L’s Summer Research Scholars (SRS) program. The SRS program supports W&L students in collaborative research and creative projects in a variety of disciplines supervised by W&L faculty and staff.

Rajsky has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2022. She holds a Bachelor of Science in architecture from Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), an MBA in accounting from La Salle University and a Ph.D. in business administration from Temple University.