Thursday, November 9, 2017

The Tax Plan’s Mega Gift To Some of Trump’s Richest Appointees


The Republican proposal will not only allow them to pass millions (or billions) to their heirs without inheritance taxes, it will also add another benefit on top of that.


This column was co-published with The Washington Post.

There are times that you run across something that’s so preposterous that it’s hard to believe it’s true. But in this case, it is.

I’m talking about the multiple — and permanent — set of tax breaks that some of the Trump administration’s mega-wealthy appointees and their heirs stand to get if the estate tax repeal in the House Republicans’ tax bill becomes law.

The appointees I’m talking about are those with a net worth above $11 million (which is a lot of them) who sold assets that the Office of Government Ethics said would pose conflict-of-interest problems in their new gigs.

Combine the rules that cover such sales with terms of the proposed estate tax repeal, and these people get a multilevel, multigenerational bonanza. A gift that would keep on giving (and giving and giving).

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, and figured that I might be overly eager to uncover gifts to the ultra-rich in the House tax cut bill, which is by no means tax reform because it hurts millions of taxpayers in my home state of New Jersey and other places that aren’t reliably Republican, but bestows plenty of breaks on big businesses and the rich. So I asked tax expert Bob Willens of Robert Willens LLC, whom I’ve consulted for decades, to show me where I was making a mistake.

Click here for the full article. 

Source: Propublica

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