A lot has happened since now-president Donald Trump and candidate Hillary Clinton debated on October 9 at Washington University in St. Louis. If you’re like most taxpayers, you probably don’t remember the candidates bantering about something called “carried interest.
”During the debate, Trump was asked what steps he’d take to make sure that the wealthiest of U.S. taxpayers pay a fair share of taxes. Trump responded by saying that he’d eliminate carried interest. What Trump actually meant, though, was that he would change the way carried interest is taxed. Clinton, too, supported making this change. And so did former president Barack Obama.
You can be forgiven if you have no idea what carried interest is. That’s because it’s something that only benefits the general partners who manage private equity and hedge funds. And most of us can’t invest in these private funds because it is so expensive to do so. Investors must usually pony up at least $250,000 to make an investment in one of these funds.
Carried interest is one way that the managers of these expensive hedge funds and private equity funds make a profit. But just because carried interest only benefits a select few, doesn’t mean that it’s not important to the U.S. economy. According to the Tax Foundation, if Congress taxed carried interest as ordinary income, it could cost the country 2,200 jobs. On the positive side, the Tax Foundation said that changing how carried interest is taxed would also generate about $15 billion during the next 10 years in the form of more taxes…
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