Americans for Tax Reform: Supercommittee Should Stay Away from Carried Interest Tax Hike
Supercommittee Should Not Hike Capital Gains Rate
The Supercommittee will be reporting on a series of policy recommendations in November. One idea they should stay far away from is a capital gains tax hike.
We are now less than one month away from the reporting deadline for the so-called “Congressional Supercommittee.” It has a mandate to report out $1.5 trillion of deficit reduction proposals by November 23rd. Failure to do so triggers a “sequester” of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in January 2013.
This particular capital gains tax rate hike would be very harmful. In a private equity investment, the partners are paid in part in fees and are taxed at ordinary income tax rates on those fees. In addition, however, the partners are also eligible to receive a profits interest in successful long-term investments via carried interest. Carried interest has been appropriately taxed as long-term capital gains for over 60 years. Carried interest is received only after limited partners in a private equity fund have received at a guaranteed rate of return on the capital they invested in the fund (generally 8 percent). These limited partners tend to be pension plans, charitable trusts, and university endowments. When the partner invests well and makes money for everyone, he gets to keep some of the profits. If the manager does not invest well, he does not receive any carried interest and in some cases may have to claw back previous carried interest payments received on prior profitable investments.
Another term for profits is “capital gains.” The money the managing partner receives is not a salary. Rather, it’s the capital gains realized from the sale of long-term capital assets. This money is appropriately treated as capital gains under current tax law, and it should remain that way. This is not special treatment–it’s the typical treatment one would expect of capital gains income.
What would happen practically if capital gains were taxed as ordinary income for managing partners in investment partnerships? Simply this– businesses that rely on investments of capital and expertise from private equity, real estate and venture capital firms would face much more difficulty in obtaining support to grow.
Read the full posting: http://www.atr.org/supercommittee-hike-capital-gains-rate-a6552#ixzz1bjiZh17l
