Carried Interest

Mitt Romney's tricky taxes

Romney's tax issue goes beyond the 15%.

Mitt Romney today admitted the obvious: His effective tax rate is closer to 15% than to the 35% charged on top incomes.

But there is still a lot we don't know, and Romney's eventual answers could spark a long-overdue change to the way that private equity and venture capital investors pay taxes.

To begin, Romney's "admission" should have been self-evident to anyone who had taken a look at MORE

Obama plan: Higher taxes on private equity

Obama explains how his jobs bill will be paid for. Private equity will not be happy.

Earlier today, The Blackstone Group (BX) CEO Steve Schwarzman offered "an olive branch" to President Obama, writing that he would be willing to share economic pain. It only took Obama a few hours to take Schwarzman up on his offer.

The White House today laid out a series of moves to pay for the $447 billion MORE

Lay off Leon Black

A rich guy threw a party. Get over it.

Leon Black, head of private equity firm Apollo Global Management (APO), is getting skewered today for spending millions of dollars on his 60th birthday party this past weekend.

Elton John did the singing, Vera Wang did the dressing and and it didn't help that attendees like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mayor Mike Bloomberg added to an air of corporatist complicity. For example, MORE

Carried interest comebacks

Last week I wrote a case for raising taxes on private equity, arguing that PE and VC firm profits should be taxed at ordinary income rates rather than at capital gains rates (as they are today). It was in the context of the (now faltering) debt ceiling negotiations, and it also was included in my daily e-newsletter.

Given that many of my readers would be affected by such a tax change, the MORE

The case for raising taxes on private equity

Raising taxes on "carried interest" is long overdue. 

I used to write a lot about the tax treatment of carried interest, or the "cut" of investment profits that private equity managers keep for themselves. I would argue that carried interest is a contingency fee for services rendered (investing other people's money), and should therefore be taxed as ordinary income (35%) rather than as capital gains (15%). You know, taxed like the MORE