SMRs and AMRs

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Democrats Split Over Bill Affecting Backers

Tax Measure Targets Hedge Funds

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post

In early June, as the Senate Finance Committee began examining how a new breed of Wall Street titan could be paying a special low tax rate on executives' salaries, one of the richest of them, hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, cut the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee a check for $28,500.

Just days later, with DSCC Chairman Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) equivocating on legislation to raise taxes on publicly traded equity firms, hedge fund giant James H. Simons, who earned $1.7 billion last year at his Renaissance Technologies LLC, donated another $28,500 to the DSCC.

By late July, Schumer was off the fence -- and on the side of the hedge funds and private-equity firms in opposing the Democratic legislation.

Later this week, Democrats will face more scrutiny over that choice. The House is to vote on a bill to stave off growth of the alternative minimum tax for a year, offer new tax breaks to middle-class homeowners and expand tax rebates for low-income parents -- paid for largely by nearly $50 billion in tax increases on the burgeoning hedge fund and private-equity industries.

(Continued here.)

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