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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: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 05 2016, @01:52PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday December 05 2016, @01:52PM (#437144) Journal

    > I'd be more concern with qualifications,
    Ha ha, please do so. I look forward to reading about how highly well qualified your new cabinet is.

    > identity politics

    Look, I'm really glad you all you independent-thinking alt-righters all abruptly stopped using the meaningless term "SJW" at exactly the same moment, but did you really have to immediately and simultaneously adopt this idiotic phrase instead? I mean I don't want to think of you all as some kind of glassy-eyed, borg-like, brainwashed collective all parroting the same stock phrases over and over, I really don't, but this kind of thing is not helping.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 05 2016, @02:40PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday December 05 2016, @02:40PM (#437156) Journal

    Look, I'm really glad you all you independent-thinking alt-righters all abruptly stopped using the meaningless term "SJW" at exactly the same moment, but did you really have to immediately and simultaneously adopt this idiotic phrase instead? I mean I don't want to think of you all as some kind of glassy-eyed, borg-like, brainwashed collective all parroting the same stock phrases over and over, I really don't, but this kind of thing is not helping.

    They should do as you recommend, but people who identify as "Liberal" ought to do likewise. I live in the People's Republic of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and every neighbor, every parent at my kid's school, half my family, and many others are absolutely convinced the Klan has taken over the country. There's no question in their minds. My best friend, who's an observant Orthodox Jew, has started talking about emigrating to Israel to escape the coming calamity. It is textbook hysteria, fueled by an agenda-driven media.

    So can we all stop using these carefully crafted caricatures of each other?

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @07:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @07:40PM (#437341)

      They should do as you recommend, but people who identify as "Liberal" ought to do likewise. I live in the People's Republic of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and every neighbor, every parent at my kid's school, half my family, and many others are absolutely convinced the Klan has taken over the country. There's no question in their minds. My best friend, who's an observant Orthodox Jew, has started talking about emigrating to Israel to escape the coming calamity. It is textbook hysteria, fueled by an agenda-driven media.

      Just this past summer I renewed my passport because it was about to expire this coming April. I knew that regardless of who won the election I didn't want to be watching the antics unfold without a valid passport. While I am not yet planning on leaving the country, I am nervously eyeing the exits. I like to keep my options open you see, just in case. I don't consider that "hysteria". I consider it prudent. I am not doing these things because of "an agenda-driven media"; I'm doing them because I am taking the President-Elect and the team he has surrounded himself with at their word that they intend to follow through with what they said they were going to do. And, no, I'm not a liberal.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @07:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @07:38PM (#437336)

    Yes, because Latino women, black transgendered dwarfs, or one-legged pot-smoking Californian gays tells me anything at all about the politics of said people.

    Except that you think they belong to a particular political class, hence identity politics.

    Shocker!- there are black conservatives.

    • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 05 2016, @11:14PM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday December 05 2016, @11:14PM (#437454) Journal

      Which is bullshit. Remind me, which side of the house is it that always points to their multi-ethnic communities when someone dares to suggest that what works in Scandinavia might work in America? "But but but we have so many black people here..."
      Is it the left and the "identity politicians" complaining about a "gay agenda"? Labelling Mexicans rapists? Bitching about welfare and positive discrimination?

      I know perfectly well that you can't define a person's politics by their skin colour or limb-count thanks very much, my post was to point out the hypocrisy of a thin-skinned alt-right that is all too happy to stereotype and compartmentalise "other" groups when they need someone to blame, but then flip around and try to claim the colour-blind moral high ground when they get called out on it. That's what pisses me off most about this "SJW" bogeyman - it's denial, projection and blame-shifting of the highest order.