NOTE: Rep. Erik Paulsen serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, and would be aware of this and has voted for this in committee and then voted for the bill on the House floor.
The following article by Allan Sloan was posted on the ProPublica website December 1, 2017:
Republicans claim they’re fixing a tax loophole that benefits wealthy money managers. Don’t believe them.
This column was co-published with The Washington Post.
Donald Trump isn’t exactly shy when it comes to denouncing things he doesn’t like. And there’s one particular part of the tax code that he denounced over and over both during the campaign and after taking office.
He said that the people benefiting from this portion of the code were “getting away with murder.”
So you’d think that the tax bill being pushed through Congress with Trump’s eager backing would be closing this loophole. But you’d be wrong. As you’ll see in a bit, talking about closing the loophole isn’t the same as closing it.
The loophole is called “carried interest.” That’s tax jargon for the share of investors’ profits that goes to the managers of private equity funds, venture capital funds and hedge funds. The standard rate is 20 percent of a fund’s profits, although there’s wide variation, both up and down. Continue reading “Carried Interest Reform Is a Sham”