Matt Yglesias, servitor to our corporate overlords, suggests that the reduced capital gains tax rate paid by rentiers like Willard Romney is really a very, very good thing. To wit: The main reason Romney’s effective rate is so low is that the American tax code contains a lot of preferences for investment income over labor […]
Via Taxprog blog: Bartlett: Mitt Romney, Carried Interest and Capital GainsNew York Times: Mitt Romney, Carried Interest and Capital Gains, by Bruce Bartlett: A key reason for Mr. Romney’s low tax rate is that a very substantial amount of his income comes from capital gains – 51% in 2011 and 58% in 2010. Capital gains, […]
by Linda Beale Romney and Private Equity’s Questionable Schemes for Paying Very Little Tax Presumably any American who wants to be informed is aware that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s claim to business acumen resides in his experience at a private equity firm that made much of its money by ramping up debt at purchased […]
by Linda Beale More on Greg Mankiw’s weak arguments for the Bain capital gains preference A few days ago, I commented on the weak arguments Greg Mankiw had put forth in his op-ed to support the preferential treatment of compensation for private equity and real estate partnership “profits” partners. He points out the categorization problem–that […]
Paul Caron at Taxprof blog points us to capital gains Is Capital Gains Tax Law Biased Against Low Income Investors? Min Dai (National University of Singapore, Department of Mathematics), Hong Liu (Washington University, Olin Business School) & Yifei Zhong (University of Oxford, Mathematical Institute), Is Capital Gains Tax Law Biased Against Low Income Investors?: The […]
by Bruce Webb Digby points us to the following NYT piece: At $106.5 Million, a Picasso Sets an Auction Record with what is in one sense an understandable bitter comment “Hey, dead artists need work too.” And as a comment on the odd priorities of our plutocracy a reasonable moral judgement, but as an economic […]
by Linda Beale Crossposted with Ataxingmatter Carried Interest: Senate Getting Swayed by Lobbyists The Senate started discussion of the “extenders” legislation on Tuesday. IN the House version, HR 4213, there is finally a carried interest provision, though it is a weak one. (Recall that carried interest is the amount that managers of hedge, equity and […]
by Linda Beale A quote from Amartya Sen, and my New Year’s Tax Resolutions (for Congress and the Obama Administration) The time between December 30 and January 4 seems to be filled with lists. Along with the ever-present list of “to dos” that haven’t been done and still are hanging around waiting for our attention, […]
Ron Wyden, Democratic Senator from Oregon who serves on the Senate Finance Committee and the Energy Committee, is generally considered a liberal, though with a mixed bag of positions that hardly qualify on all grounds. He is against the estate tax and favors lowering rates of capital gains taxes, neither of which makes sense, from […]
Yes, I’m still distracted (and under deadlines), but this is too good to pass up. Greg Mankiw sends us to “Wisdom from Michael Kinsley.” Which turns out to be this: There is no need to encourage risk-taking entrepreneurship with special tax breaks. Risk takers will take risks, and if the risks work out they shouldn’t […]