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posted by martyb on Monday December 05 2016, @05:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the perfectly-legal-loopholes dept.

Drew Harwell over at the Washington Post has an interesting story about a tax loophole that could allow Trump appointees to avoid paying millions in taxes.

President-elect Donald Trump's ultra-wealthy Cabinet nominees will be able to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes in the coming weeks when they sell some of their holdings to avoid conflicts of interest in their new positions.

The tax advantage will allow Trump officials, forced by ethics laws to sell certain assets, to defer the weighty tax bills they would otherwise owe on the profits from selling stock and other holdings.

The benefit is one of the more subtle ways that the millionaires and billionaires of Trump's White House, which already will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history, could benefit financially from their transition into the nation's halls of power.

The legal tax maneuver, offered for years to executive-branch appointees and employees, was designed to help ease the sting of being forced to suddenly sell investments.

But the federal program, encoded in Section 2634 of federal ethics laws and known as a "certificate of divestiture," has never been tested quite like this. Trump's Cabinet picks have amassed assets worth billions of dollars from lifetimes in banking and investing, much of which they will be able to sell tax-free.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @06:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @06:50AM (#437082)

    Because as pointed out elsewhere in the thread...

    "People care because someone got elected on a wave of discontent at dishonest elites gaming the system."

    You know drain the swamp etc?

    Trump got elected on the basis of stopping this sort of thing.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @08:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @08:53AM (#437105)

    He's obeying the law. The law is written the way it is, and was for a long time before he came along.

    How does obeying the law make him dishonest? Wait, before you spin yourself into a tornado trying to answer that, let me help you: it doesn't.

    If he'd lobbied for this law and got it passed six months ago, I might have thought you were on to something.

    But he didn't. And it wasn't. And you aren't.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @02:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @02:20PM (#437149)

      > How does obeying the law make him dishonest?

      He didn't campaign on sticking to the letter of the law. He campaigned on the fact that the law was too permissive.
      The entire "swamp" is completely legal. He still promised to "drain" it.
      He needs to do better than the law in order to live up to his rhetoric.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:46PM (#437189)

        This comment should address many posts above. A drain the swamp example in two words... Clinton Foundation.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:50PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:50PM (#437194)

          Since no one asked for an example, its hard to figure out what your point is.
          This has nothing to do with clinton. She's not in the picture any more.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @06:22PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @06:22PM (#437292)

            Clinton Foundation... How to make millions behind a loophole.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @07:42PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @07:42PM (#437342)

              Trump University... How to defraud thousands of people behind a loophole.

              See, we can play this game all day long.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @02:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @02:13PM (#437148)

    You know drain the swamp etc?

    What people fail to realize is, he was talking about draining the swamp only because he wanted to put a golf course there.