Over the past three election cycles, Democrats and Republicans have both put carried interests in their crosshairs. You'd think that such agreement would be a harbinger of actual action.* But no - it never quite seems to happen. A 113-page (yes, that's right - 113-page) 2008 NYSBA Tax Section Report is just one missive that shows how hard this might really be to pull off.
Unlikely in this cycle? Especially with a private-equity maven (JD Vance) in the No. 2 spot? Maybe. Maybe not.
This time, could it really happen? President Trump has again raised the spectre** of ending the capital-gains treatment for carries. And there are bipartisan efforts in both houses of Congress to the same effect.
Well, it's possible that there may indeed be a harbinger of things to come. It could be bigger <shudder> than Trump's support. It could be bigger than bipartisan congressional activity. What we have here is that this issue has now surfaced in none other than . . . Jon Stewart's weekly diatribe on The Daily Show. At around the 14:25 mark of this week's episode, in suggesting alternatives to the cutting being done by Elon Musk and his DOGE crew, Stewart suggests (inter alia): "Oh wait. How about we just close down the carried-interest loophole on hedge funds. That's $1.3 billion a year."
Maybe Stewart wasn't aware that Trump has already suggested it. But that's not the point. Not only has Trump suggested it and not only have both congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans suggested it, but, now, Jon Stewart has suggested it. Watch out, all you fans of carried interests!
Anyway, eventually, later in the episode, Stewart gets himself so upset about the whole DOGE thing as a general matter that he breaks a ceramic coffee mug and in doing so slices his hand up pretty good.*** Reminiscent of DiCaprio in Django.**** We might even say that: Stewart Django'd the carried-interest tax break!*****
A curse of Confucius is reputed to be: may you live in interesting times. Not much doubt that these are they. I have a feeling that the way this issue plays out is, like so many other things, going to be quite interesting.
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* In a prior post, I discussed another example of where something didn't happen politically (in particular the loosening up of 401(k) hardship rules to deal with the fallout from the Enron debacle) even though both Democrats and Republicans had seemed to be on board.
** I like that spelling - sorry.
*** I once did something like this trying to repair a vase with spackle instead of glue. Don't do it; boy, broken ceramics sure can slice you up.
**** [SPOILER ALERT - read no farther in this footnote if you don't want key information about Django] To be honest, I'm not a big Django fan. Thought it lost stream after [SPOILER ALERT] Waltz exited. But, for what it's worth, Pulp Fiction is in fact my favorite movie.
***** Forgive me for trying to come up with a new verb - I've long been fascinated, as you can see from this prior post, with those individuals who can actually add to and otherwise affect the language that people use.
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