ADVERTISEMENT

Congressional Democrats Target Private Equity Tax Break

Congressional Democrats Target Private Equity Tax Break

(Bloomberg) -- Democrats are beginning to flex their legislative muscle over ending a popular tax break used by private equity and hedge fund managers that is nearly universally despised in the party.

Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey re-introduced legislation Wednesday that would end the break known as carried interest. The provision allows fund managers to have some of their income taxed at the 23.8 percent capital gains rate, rather than the top ordinary rate of 37 percent.

For years, Democrats have proposed plans that would end the carried interest tax break. This bill isn’t likely to become law anytime soon, but it would be one of the easiest tax issues for Democrats to agree on if they sweep the House, Senate and White House after the 2020 elections.

“Certain wealthy taxpayers should not have their own parallel tax code of special breaks and deductions,” Pascrell said in a statement. He said the American system has “always been based on the principle that we ask more from those who have more, but today private-equity investors can pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.”

Doing away with carried interest appeals to populist voters. President Donald Trump during the 2016 elections called hedge fund managers “paper pushers” who are “getting away with murder” because of the low tax rates they pay.

Trump’s 2017 tax law didn’t repeal the carried interest provision, but makes fund managers hold onto their investments for three years, instead of one to qualify for the lower rates.

Ending the carried interest tax break is more of a symbolic move to make Wall Street investors pay more, rather than one that can be used to pay for progressive priorities, such as free college tuition or single-payer health care.

Taxing carried interest at ordinary income rates would raise about $14 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For example, that would pay for only 20 percent of Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s $70 billion universal childcare plan.

This “discriminatory tax increase has been rejected repeatedly by economists, tax experts, and bipartisan congresses,” Drew Maloney, who leads the private equity trade group American Investment Council, said in a statement. “It would unnecessarily harm entrepreneurs, business owners, endowments, pension funds, and American workers in every state and congressional district in the country.”

If private equity managers want to delineate their income from the money they re-invest in the fund and subject to risk, they can write contracts to do that, rather than relying on the tax code to support their business model, said Dean Baker, the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“Carried interest stands out as thumbing your nose at the IRS and ordinary people,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Davison in Washington at ldavison4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.