Carried Interest: I will close the carried interest loophole.
The Obama White House has been trying to close the carried interest loophole since its first budget proposal in 2009, asking Congress to begin taxing such payments as ordinary income.
But Clinton also threatened an "exit tax" for companies that want to move overseas, close the carried-interest loophole and strengthen financial regulators, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
More recently, though, he has voted to close the carried interest loophole with no preconditions about other loopholes.
But the Senate nearly closed the carried interest loophole this summer by attaching carried interest clampdowns to a series of bills reauthorizing extended unemployment benefits -- efforts that fell just short of overcoming a Republican filibuster.
If we capped the deductibility of corporate debt, and closed the carried-interest loophole, it would not prevent private-equity firms from buying companies or improving corporate performance.
On November 18th, Pearl joined Sander Levin, now the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, at a press conference to renew the call for closing the carried-interest loophole.
Even so, by 2010, when the recession had officially been over for several months, congressional Democrats were talking about closing the carried-interest loophole with renewed seriousness.
Instead, the package could have closed the "carried interest" loophole, which wealthy investment fund managers exploit to pay lower taxes than other workers.
Furthermore, closing the carried interest loophole, many experts argued, would affect more than just hedge funds and is likely to also affect private equity and venture capital.
